A Path to Coldness of Heart

Chapter Twenty-Six:

Late Autumn 1018 AFE:

Beyond Ressurection

R agnarson bellowed, “Silence!”

He had the voice of command still, and it was loud, yet the effect was neither quick nor comprehensive.

“I will have you beaten if you don’t stop running your mouths.”

Those people knew he was not given to idle threats. They knew, too, that there was no precedent for him doing anything of the sort. Only…

Only this was, clearly, not the man whose arrogance had driven him to disaster beyond the Mountains of M’Hand. This man had been chastened and tempered.

He had a harder feel, and, maybe, a new disdain for past tolerance. He might even have developed a streak of cruelty.

He had been in the thrall of the Dread Empire. Only the shell might be Bragi Ragnarson now. Best not to irk the possible monster concealed inside. Though, still, he was just one man.

Even so, the Thing hall so quietened that the proverbial pin would have sounded like a clash of cymbals. It seemed, almost, that everyone had stopped breathing.

In that desolation of sound a small voice asked, “Daddy?”

The tiny question had more impact on Kavelin than did all the murder and maneuver of the year just passed. Bragi Ragnarson, startled, looked down at the boy in the old-fashioned clothes, who looked back with puzzled hope.

The hard man changed. He scooped the boy up, settled him onto his left hip. He peered into the Sedlmayrese delegation, beckoned Kristen, shook his head slightly when Dahl Haas started to follow.

Ragnarson settled his grandson on his other hip, then declared, “The bullshit will stop.” That sounded certain as death. That made it plain who would be in charge. Special pain was in store for anyone who disagreed. All of which he sold without having one soldier behind him.

“I made a big mistake. It cost me more than I can calculate but it cost Kavelin even more. It almost cost everything that three monarchs did to make this a principality where every subject could be proud to live. I will not repeat that error. I vow that here, now.”

He was improvising, promising what many wanted to hear but meaning it. His intensity permitted no questions, however much future and established enemies might want to know about his relationship with the Dread Empire.

His piece said, he spoke past Kristen to Inger, “Give them the rest of today to get their minds around this.”

Inger managed a nod. She looked to Josiah Gales, who nodded in turn. “Don’t we all? Need time?”

Bragi Ragnarson carried his son and grandson down to the floor of the hall, followed by Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir. He set the boys down, took each by the hand, walked out, headed for Castle Krief. He was not armed. Today he had no need.

He was improvising still, going on instinct. For the moment instinct and timing were enough.

The news had gotten out already. People came to see. Most remained quiet and respectful. There was almost supernatural awe in their attitudes.

There was, as well, hope.

Nature had blessed Kavelin. A tide of economic improvement was rising. But the political situation remained calm mainly because the contenders were exhausted and, in Inger’s case, impoverished. Ordinary folk dreaded the day she obtained fresh resources.

This might herald the possibility of avoiding all that.

A wondrous hope it was.

…

Inger stared at Josiah Gales as the excitement oozed out of the Thing hall. He said nothing. Neither did Babeltausque, nor did Nathan, who had rejoined them, still shocked. Dr. Wachtel fidgeted but kept his mouth shut.

“What do we do?” Inger murmured. “What do we do?”

She harvested no advice. Josiah, though, looked like a man who had shed a huge moral burden. Nathan was afraid. His future no longer looked as sweet as it had-that age of bitter almonds. Babeltausque stared in the direction the Heltkler girl went as Ozora Mundwiller led her tribe away.

Inger was worried about the sorcerer. Something was going on with him. Something obsessive. It might be a harbinger of a darkness to come.

She hoped she was wrong. She hoped she was imagining it. She hoped he was not just one trivial mishap of an emotional trigger short of crossing over into the night land that had claimed Father Ather Kendo.

She hoped, but, this morning, she had no confidence that she would ever see anything good again. Hell had become impatient. Hell was coming to her.

Josiah said, “What do we do? How about we go home, hunker down, and see what happens next?”

Bragi was back. He had come in like some natural force, gathering the ley lines of power and expectation to himself. Nothing would happen ever again without his hands being on it, in it, or taken into account. He had managed it so easily, so instinctively.

Bragi was back but he had changed. He was the nostalgically recalled hard case but there was more to him now. Inger thought it might be a new maturity.

She said, “You’re right, Josiah. Let’s just ride the lightning and see where it takes us.” Bragi’s behavior suggested that would not be the hell she might have expected.

He was not a Greyfells.

Though the day was advancing and it should have been getting warmer, a scatter of snowflakes fell during the transit to the castle. The flakes melted instantly but did proclaim the imminence of winter.

Inger realized that the trees had shed most of their leaves. When did that happen? She had been too preoccupied to notice. That was sad. Autumn was her favorite season. She loved to see the colors.

“Josiah, the leaves are gone.”

“Uhm?”

“We’ve been missing the good things.”

Gales grunted agreement despite having no real idea what she was thinking. He was good that way. Nathan and Babeltausque contributed supporting nods despite being even farther in the dark.

…

After sixteen days in hiding, while rumors of his death abounded- though no body ever surfaced-Megelin made a run for safety, into the desert north of Al Rhemish. He was accompanied by Misr and Mizr, an ancient chamberlain called abd-Arliki, and a grizzled, one-eyed rogue called Hawk in his presence and Boneman behind his back. Boneman was a villain of no special stature. He was involved with Megelin’s court through the twins, who had used him to protect their area of corruption. He was dangerous but was known amongst the low mainly because he often bragged that he was evil.

That declaration did not come from the heart. He did it to intimidate. But for the uprising Megelin would never have crossed paths with Boneman. In the most dangerous hours of the riot, as the good people let themselves vent ancient frustrations, those whose lives might be forfeit had to support one another. The twins brought Boneman in because he was strong, desperate himself, and lacked a conscience. He agreed not just because of the generous pay but because he knew hard men might use the chaos to mask writing a bloody final sentence to Boneman’s tale. Boneman spirited his charges away with considerable finesse. “It’s what I do,” he bragged, not pleased about having to do it with feeble old men, a weakling king, and a score of donkeys with a mass of cargo. Megelin wondered why the twins insisted that so many animals were needed.

The party headed north, the direction pursuers were least likely to look. Megelin did not initially realize that they were following the track that his father had taken when fleeing Al Rhemish at an even younger age. Unlike his father, Megelin did not have a horde of enraged Invincibles behind him. There was no pursuit at all. All Al Rhemish thought he had been killed. Even Old Meddler thought him lost and was distressed. Megelin bin Haroun was a feeble tool, blunt, bent, and cracked, but had been, even so, the best blade left in a dwindling set.

All went well for several days. Panic faded. Fear drew back. The pace slackened. The band moved on more through inertia than from a need to escape.

Then the dread returned tenfold, with the king badly shaken. Mizr demanded, “What is the matter, Majesty?” He and his brother were so worn down that neither attended much beyond their own exhaustion. Abd-Arliki was worse. He was fading. Only Boneman remained strong enough to help him. Boneman did not want to bother. He eyed the old chamberlain like he was contemplating getting rid of the burden.

Megelin gasped, “I know where we are! From my father’s stories about when he was fleeing from the Scourge of God. A little farther on we’ll find a ruined Imperial watchtower that’s haunted by a hungry ghost,” using ghost to mean a ghoul or devil. “My father was trapped there for a while. He wasn’t ever sure how he got away.”

Never saying so, he admitted that he was not the man his father had been. “We’re probably dangerously close already. If we camp around here the ghost will come get us.”

He thought that was how it had worked. It had been fifteen years since he had heard the story and he had not paid close attention at the time.

“No matter,” Mizr said. “We have treasure. No one is after us. We don’t have to stick to this obscure road.”

“Treasure?” Megelin asked.

“Misr and I brought the household funds. We will live well wherever we settle. I suggest we turn west.”

Misr agreed. “Going west will give us a better chance to find help for abd-Arliki.”

Megelin looked north. There was nothing there to draw him, really. He thought he could feel the demon waiting, insane with mystical hunger. “West we go. Tomorrow. Or now, even. I want to get farther from the hungry ghost.”

Why had the twins not mentioned the household treasury before? Because they wanted it all for themselves? Obviously, but now they understood that they could not get out of this on their own.

The real truth was, Mizr mentioned the money only because he was too tired to remain cautious.

No ghoul came that night but death was not a stranger.

Though Megelin was not surprised he did see something odd about abd-Arliki’s eyes. They had the buggy look of a hanged man.

Even Misr and Mizr betrayed guilty relief because the old man no longer hindered them. Megelin was not sure why they had brought abdArliki in the first place, but neither did he care. He was busy being exasperated with Boneman, who refused to move on until he interred the old man in a substantial freestone cairn.

“Hey, show the dead some respect…Majesty. The courtesy don’t cost nothing. You’d appreciate it if it was you. They’s plenty a things out there that’d gnaw on you.”

Misr and Mizr helped impatiently. Boneman thanked them graciously, then gave his sullen, nonparticipating monarch a black look. “Nobody can’t say I disrespect the dead.”

Later, the survivors hit an old east-west trace. Following that, they found some shepherds beside a small oasis. Those people had no news from Al Rhemish-nor did they care. They were not sure who ruled there.

Megelin got his feelings bruised. He was not a hunted fugitive. No one cared enough to bother. He asked the twins, “Did we mess up by running? Should we have stayed?”

“We did the right thing,” Mizr insisted. “Otherwise, we would’ve beaten abd-Arliki into the darkness. They were coming. It is possible that we ran too far, though.”

Misr added, “We should have stayed close by and just gone back after everybody finally calmed down.”

His twin nodded. “Indeed. Panic is never good. I think that it may not yet be too late. We should go back. What say you, Hawk?”

…

Megelin felt like a crushing weight lay on his chest. He surged into panicked wakefulness-and found that there was a weight atop him. It was a large, flat rock half as heavy as he was. Other rocks surrounded him. He could get no leverage to get out.

A grinning, one-eyed face appeared above, Boneman straining under the weight of another large rock. “Good morning, Majesty.” The villain settled his burden onto Megelin’s groin. “Looks like it’s going to be a wonderful day.”

Megelin did not quite grasp his situation. “Please. What? Why?”

“You know I insist on honoring the dead. They deserve all the respect we can give them.” He vanished from view. Megelin fought the rocks, without success. His limbs were pinned, too.

From somewhere close by Boneman growled, “Will you lay still?” A squishy crunch followed.

The one-eyed man appeared with another rock. This one was wet and red and had bits of hair and flesh stuck to it. The red was so fresh it had not yet drawn flies.

Something bit Megelin on his inside left ankle.

“That Misr just didn’t want to get along. I’m tempted to disrespect him.”

Megelin tried to ask what was happening and why. Panic took over. He shrieked commands.

“Now why do you want to get all rude like that? Here I am, busting my butt to do you royal honors, and you’re being unpleasant. Relax, Majesty. Your grave will be the biggest and best of all. The foxes and jackals and vultures will never get at you.”

Something small took a bite of Megelin. He squealed, imagining things crawling all over him down there. Or maybe he was not imagining things. Another bite followed, then another.

The sun soared higher. It beat down into Megelin’s face. Boneman hummed as he went on stacking stones. He confided his plans for a future spent enjoying the treasure in all those donkey packs. “The Disciple’s preachers told the truth. If we’re patient God will grant us what we deserve.”

Boneman said that just before he placed the slab that shut out the sun. That and, “Sleep tight, Majesty.”

Megelin wept. He begged. Vaguely, remotely, he heard Boneman humming or chatting as he interred Misr and Mizr. Megelin convinced himself that this was only a cruel practical joke. Boneman would dig him out once his bully streak had been fed.

Despite the pain and terror Megelin fell asleep. Sleep was an escape. He dreamed a dream that recalled his father’s adventure when he crossed this same desert, headed north. In that dream Megelin approached the ghost and recognized him, as his father had not done then.

That devil was no spirit. He was not supernatural at all. He was Old Meddler, playing the games he played to keep the world a violent place.

Megelin wakened. The darkness had turned solid. The air had cooled. He could not move. Boneman had done nothing to alleviate his condition. He was lightheaded with hunger and thirst and in substantial pain where insects-small ants, he suspected-had been eating him. Despite all, he felt optimistic. Old Meddler would come for him! He was a valuable resource. Likely the ancient had been on his track for some time.

Panic threatened.

He fought it down. He had to keep an iron grip. A rescue would come. He was the goddamned King. He would show Boneman what Megelin bin Haroun could do. Boneman would, indeed, get what he deserved! Boneman’s fate would be the punch line to this cruel joke.

Something began snuffling round the cairn. It grumbled to itself. It tried nosing rocks off the pile. They were too big. Then there were more snufflers. They growled at one another and grunted as they circled, eager to get at the meat. Then there were a half-dozen things all angrily frustrated.

Megelin barely breathed.

But then he began to whimper. The beasts had gotten at one of the twins. A growling, snarling contest exploded as the pack determined feeding order.

A small rock by the left side of Megelin’s face slipped out of the pile. Its departure let the slab blocking his view of the sky tilt and slide slightly to the left. Megelin was blinded by the light of a millions stars. Then all he could see was a dark muzzle and cruel teeth illuminated from the side by moonlight. Hot carrion breath burned his face and filled his lungs.

…

The winged steed planed high above the desert. Its brain was that of a horse. Its thoughts were neither complex nor quick but they did work in great, slow rhythms that, in time, eventually executed mildly abstract processes.

It had lived for millennia. It had developed some fixed opinions during that time. Among them was a conviction that immortality was wasted if it had to be spent as the tool of a defective personality.

Ages of slow cogitation had been required to reach that one conclusion. The fabulous beast had begun to nibble round the edges of the notion that it might do something itself to alter its condition, but that concept had not yet solidified.

Meanwhile, it remained a tool and was not happy about that. And it was bored.

Nothing had changed since the time of the Nawami Crusades.

Its rider urged it into a downward turn to the right, headed farther to the northwest. The horse soon saw the vultures its rider had spied already.

…

The tiny ancient dismounted. He revealed nothing but was irked. He had failed to mark his useful fool Megelin so he could be found easily, so he had had to spend days hunting. And here lay the price of laziness. He was just hours too late.

The vultures danced amongst the scattered stones and bones and bluffed a willingness to fight for the little that was left. He swung the Horn off his back, spoke to it, touched it, tapped out a one-hand tune on a battery of seven valves. The carrion birds experienced something neither man nor mount felt. They shrieked and took to the sky so suddenly that there were several feather-shedding collisions.

Swarms of flies fled with them. Ants of a dozen breeds broke off harvesting and skirmishing and headed home to defend the nest.

The Star Rider strolled around playing his mystic Horn. There was evidence enough in the recollections of the air and stones and scrubby brush to sketch out what had happened. “Uhm.” A dozen donkeys had left here headed northeast, an unusual direction to travel. Real safety lay closer directly to the west. Maybe the killer felt more comfortable headed northeast. He might be a smuggler or someone who had hidden in the Kapenrungs during the Royalist exile.

The ancient contemplated one incompletely demolished cairn. Once again cruel misfortune, stupidity, and human fallibility had conspired to deprive him of an asset. Never a prime asset, to be sure, but the best in his dwindling arsenal.

It had not been a good year.

Next year might be worse.

He sensed a threat being born. Specifics had not yet proclaimed themselves. No foe had been so bold as to declare himself. But there were signs and shadows and blank spaces out there. That meant just one thing.

Clever death was snuffling along his back trail. It might be lying in wait up ahead, too.

The wizard Varthlokkur would be involved, somewhere. The aftershocks of his activity in Al Rhemish had led to this.

Emotion paled with the ages. Angry and unhappy though he was, the Star Rider set aside his inclination to exact revenge or deliver punishment.

He took to the air, searching for the murderer.

The man could become a useful tool himself, though never so useful as a king.

…

The ruins of el Aswad were so far from Fangdred that there was no communicating between the two directly. Scalza, guided by his mother, fearlessly carried his scrying bowl through a portal to an Imperial border post southwest of Throyes. There he paced the crude rampart, stared at an adobe compound manned by Invincibles. The desert warriors were a tripwire meant to warn of a renewed Throyen effort to occupy the coast of the Sea of Kotsum.

Scalza’s mother was waiting on her lifeguards. The boy did not understand the complexity of her relationship with them. He did understand that she was making a special effort to keep them happy. He wondered why but did not ask.

He was near being a universe unto himself, open only to his sister and, marginally, his cousin. His mother had brought him along because she considered his emotional jeopardy to be greater than the physical risks of the operation.

Though Scalza pretended boredom he was excited. This was his first ever real adventure.

Mist’s lifeguards arrived. Soon afterward Scalza was hunched over his bowl, executing simple sorceries meant to inform his uncle-by-marriage that his immediate attention was needed.

Mist said, “I want him here instead of back at Fangdred. That will save him several days.”

Scalza nodded, then decided that a verbal response was needed. “I will do that, Mother.”

He liked her idea. He would get to stay here longer. The adventure would not end the day it began.

The wizard took longer to arrive than Mist anticipated. He did not look good and was not happy when he did. She asked, “I caught you at a bad time?”

“Any time seems to be a bad time to have Radeachar carry me over the Jebal.”

“Ah? So?”

“That’s the shortest way to get here unseen by El Murid’s friends.”

Mist did not understand and said so.

“We came north over the Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni,” he reiterated.

“Oh.” Mist recalling that the name meant Mountains of the Thousand Sorcerers. “The thousand resented you trespassing.”

“Every last one, and all their children, too. Some of them are really nasty. And some have skills. I mean to reverse my route exactly going back. I’ll find out if they learned any manners.” He was vexed in the extreme.

“Let me not irritate you further by wasting your time. Scalza, explain. You caught it happening.”

That was a good move. Scalza liked not being treated like a kid. “It wasn’t all me. I was just the only one around when Lord Yuan showed up and said somebody was using that Horn thing. He told me where. I zeroed in. Then he showed me how to look backward to see why that man was there looking around.”

Scalza was clear and concise with his explanation. He did not need much questioning.

“This is not good,” the wizard opined. “Haroun will be… You know… I can’t guess how he’ll react. He’ll surprise us. And me going back by the same route won’t be just for fun now. Those people better not mess with me. I won’t be gentle and forgiving.”

Mist said, “Whatever, you need to rest before you go. You don’t want to be so tired that you make stupid mistakes.”

“I do believe that, this once, I’ll take some common sense advice.”

Which let Mist know that his passage up the spine of the Jebal had been more of a challenge than he admitted. He was in a mood to administer another set of spankings.

She stayed put while Varthlokkur did. She had a lifeguard take a patrol to scout the Invincible strongpoint, with Scalza going along. The boy would have something extra to brag about to his sister. His mother would get a read on his character under stress.

The lifeguard reported that he did well.

Scalza was reluctant to go back to Fangdred. He argued, but without spoiled child passion. He did go sullen on being reminded that when he had the bad luck to draw her for a mother he had lost his chance to enjoy a normal life. Some opportunist was sure to snatch him in hopes of gaining leverage on her the instant he tried

Varthlokkur agreed as he summoned the Unborn.

Scalza said, “I know that stuff in my head but I still hate it… Let’s go home. At least I can brag to Eka.”

…

The sorcerers of the Jebal had understood Varthlokkur’s warnings. He had only two encounters. Both times he overresponded dramatically. He expected to have no problems ever after.

Bin Yousif had done little during his absence but scout toward Sebil el Selib. He had a young hare roasting, disdaining the dietary laws. “So what was it? And did you have as much trouble as I predicted?”

“I had all that trouble and a whole lot more. There are some testy recluses up there. Mist wanted me to pass on some bad news about your son.”

“What did he…? He was killed during the uprising.”

“No. He avoided that. He sneaked out with some of his advisers.”

…

It had been weeks since news of the troubles in Al Rhemish first reached Sebil el Selib. Yasmid’s captains had been excited, then. The people would turn the Royalist rascals out… But the rioters punished the Faithful with equal passion.

Yasmid found the distraction useful. If her people were trying to profit from the uprising they had no time to worry about how she might be changing.

Habibullah, too, seized the day. He isolated her, because of her ill health and grief for her son, in her father’s tent, where the foreign physicians could attend her. When word came that Megelin had survived after all, and was hiding somewhere in the desert, Habibullah insisted that she remain under Phogedatvitsu’s care.

The swami saw no shame in her condition. He manufactured reports about her failing health, which he could reverse given several months. Habibullah carried messages to and from Elwas al-Souki, whom Yasmid appointed as surrogate for her and her father till she came back or El Murid was able to resume his role as first among the Faithful.

Yasmid had been in her father’s tent only a short while before she understood that her father would never take up the mantle of the Disciple again. The Matayangans had conquered his addiction but the man the poppy had left behind was almost useless, and had no connection with today’s reality. He thought Yasmid was her mother, Meryem. He recognized her condition-and was positive that he was the father. The fakirs could not free him from that delusion.

Which left Phogedatvitsu frightened. If that suggestion got out… He launched a vigorous program meant to keep everyone away from Yasmid and her father. How terrible would the wrath of the Believers be if they thought their demigod had sired a child on his own daughter?

That would be the end of her. That would be the end of him. That would be the end of the Faith.

Again and again Yasmid asked herself why had she been so stupid. Why she had gone so weak the instant that man no longer left her waiting by the door.

Was God testing her? How could this be part of the Divine Plan? How mad must that Plan be?

The essence of the Faith was submission to the Will of God. How to tell, anymore, though, what that Will might really be?

Personal terror became part of life in the Disciple’s tent and terror stimulated ever-deepening religious doubt.

Habibullah reported that Elwas al-Souki and his intimates insisted on a direct meeting, whatever her condition. They promised to be brief. They would not be denied.

Habibullah bundled Yasmid into a wheeled chair once used by her father. He brought the Disciple himself in, too, sedated and under intimate supervision by Phogedatvitsu personally. The swami was no longer Elwas’s instrument. He understood that his own fate hinged on keeping her condition secret. He had El Murid primed to ramble incoherently about the Evil One.

The confrontation proved anticlimactic, the dark emotion beforehand wasted. al-Souki was in a blistering rush. He arrived thoroughly distracted, having discovered all the thousand grim little truths about being the man in charge. He strained to avoid being brusque. His impatience was fierce. His interest in Yasmid’s health never passed beyond courteous form.

He called her “Lady” only, not any of the creative honorifics of the past. “We have an unusual situation taking shape. Details are sketchy but suggestive. It involves the Empire Destroyer.”

Elwas went on to relate a confused story obtained from allies developed during punitive expeditions into the high Jebal. The Empire Destroyer had been seen up there. He had skirmished with the mountain people while traveling along the high range. “Because there is nothing we could actually do to keep him from going anywhere he wants, him using a remote route says what he wanted most was not to be noticed.”

Yasmid focused. This would be important. That ancient power had shown no interest in Hammad al Nakir before he turned up in Al Rhemish-at a time when Haroun must have been there. Now the old doom was sliding around Sebil el Selib by sneaking through the highest mountains.

She nodded to herself. “Was that Unborn thing involved?”

“It was. Carrying the sorcerer through the sky.”

“I see.” It seemed plain enough. “Why go that way, and court conflict, when a grand swing over the erg could be managed with less chance of being noticed?”

“Urgency? Swinging out over the erg would take hours longer. Too, the Unborn has made several mountain route journeys without the sorcerer, always carrying something when it was going south.”

Yasmid nodded again. She did not fully reflect, though, before saying, “They’re up to something at el Aswad.”

Elwas seemed fully pleased with his Lady. “Exactly. I have a company of Invincibles headed there, subject to your permission. You can recall them if you want.”

She could not back off even if her sifting of facts and speculation left her sure that Haroun was out there, too. “Elwas, as ever, your decision is perfection, and beyond reproach. Just don’t waste the Invincibles. We may yet need to cross the erg to Al Rhemish.”

That notion startled al-Souki.

Yasmid continued, “Varthlokkur isn’t called the Empire Destroyer because he kicked over an anthill when he was seven. With Magden Norath gone he is the most dangerous man in the world. Try to find out what he’s up to without starting a war. Just walk up and ask him if you have to.”

“I understand. Such was the course I’d hoped to pursue.”

“Excellent.” Yasmid did not believe him. Brilliant though Elwas might be, he was capable of misleading himself into thinking he was clever enough to outwit and arrest someone like Varthlokkur.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, so far Elwas had not run into any evidence to disabuse him of such a conceit.

…

Haroun bin Yousif was back doing what Haroun bin Yousif did best. He was a ghost drifting down the wadi that passed close by the Disciple’s tent. Luck crawled with him. The wadi was dry. Assured by Varthlokkur that the Faithful here clung tightly to El Murid’s ban against sorcery, he did not fail to use his own skills to conceal himself and to probe for trouble lying in wait.

Despite the ruckus Varthlokkur raised in the Jebal, which had a troop of Invincibles headed out to investigate, Sebil el Selib itself was under no special state of alert.

Haroun oozed up to his former point of entry. Repairs had been made. New spikes had been set. But no watcher had been posted. No tripwire spells or actual cords had been installed, nor had booby traps been placed.

How could these people be so arrogantly overconfident? So lacking in justifiable paranoia? Did they really think that they had nothing to fear? Were they that sure of the countenance of God?

Must be. But no sane man ever should be.

God had proven, time and again, that His favor was fickle. Haroun bin Yousif was not made to trust anything outside himself. He dithered half an hour trying to find hidden pitfalls. Rational people would have created some in case the invader returned. Could it be that they never figured it out?

He could imagine Yasmid softening any effort to snare him-but did not believe that she would.

His innards knotted as he finally forced himself forward-not where he penetrated the tent before. This had to be done before there was light enough to show that something strange was happening.

Varthlokkur had convinced him-almost-that his part, successfully executed, would end the torments his kingdom had suffered for two generations. This would reshape everything. It would compel the birth of a new order because there would be no old order left. What shape that new order took would be in his hands, too, insofar as he cared to sculpt it.

Varthlokkur would build on what they did here, toward a new order for the rest of the world.

Haroun moved forward. He wanted to believe but could not. Not really. They were still trying to throw a bridle on the wind. Even so, he hoped. He had a goal again-though he did not quite understand it.

Once inside he produced a wane witch light. By its glow he proceeded to the area where once the foxes had denned. Ha! Here were sure signs that all was not as it had been. That whole wide space had been cleansed down to the bare earth. He would not have to climb over trash once he went to work.

He had brought equipment with him. He hoped the clatter he raised using it would not give him away.

He set out a triangle of witch lanterns for light, then assembled a pole fifteen feet long. He attached a spearhead so sharp that one ought not to look at it directly. He used that to make an eight-foot cut in the canvas overhead, made another cut at right angles to that, then a third parallel to the second, leaving a flap hanging down. Then he cut parallel cut to those to create a six-inch wide strip that might be climbable, making a last resort escape. Only…

Only that canvas was almost as old as he was. His weight ripped a longer strip out when he tested it.

Damn!

He was wasting time. He was behind schedule and falling further back. If he did not get a signal out soon Varthlokkur would abandon him to his fate.

He blew air into a sheep’s bladder, attached a mechanical device provided by the wizard, invested the bladder with a levitation spell, child’s-play simple but the possibility had not occurred to him till Varthlokkur showed it to him.

His time with the Empire Destroyer had been deflating. He now understood how limited his own talents and imagination were.

Once the sheep’s bladder rose a few hundred feet something tripped a mechanical device that sparked a flame. That lasted just seconds and was not showy. No one should notice at that hour. Anyone who did ought to think that it was some strange shooting star.

Too much to hope for, in Haroun’s estimation. Much too much.

He grew impatient. The risks were rising now. Others would be involved. He could not keep them from screwing up. Worse, his role now consisted entirely of waiting.

Varthlokkur and the Unborn dropped in so quietly that Haroun would have missed them if he had not been watching. The wizard had draped the Unborn in black gauze, rendering it invisible from outside while only slightly impairing the monster’s ability to perceive the world around it.

The Unborn deposited the sorcerer, rose against the stars. “There!” Haroun said. “I see a pink glow when I look straight up.”

“Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth and in the wrong religious tradition to be looking up someone’s skirt?”

Varthlokkur could not have stunned him more by whacking him with a hammer. “We’re late. We’ll have to push it if we’re still going to get this done quietly.”

Quietly was the ultimate hope. Full execution without ever being noticed. Come and gone undetected, leaving behind nothing but delayed confusion.

The hope.

Haroun considered it forlorn, insane, impossible.

Something would go wrong, if only because he was part of a team. Long experience left him confident that others never achieved his level of competence. They could not maintain the focus.

The wizard asked, “Is something wrong? Is there some reason you’re freezing up instead of trying to make up time?”

“No good reason,” Haroun admitted. “We can make up time fast if you expand your sleep spells. You were right. No one will notice and no alarms will be tripped. There is no magic here.” He used “magic” as a convenience, lacking something more precise.

Varthlokkur understood. “I’ll take advantage of that, then. I’ll deploy the spells as we go.”

Haroun appreciated the fact that Varthlokkur wasted no time on “I told you so.” He had argued for a more aggressive use of sorcery. He was less concerned about leaving evidence behind.

Haroun headed into the inhabited part of the tent. Changes were legion. The biggest was the reduction in clutter. Tons of trash had been carried off to be buried, burned, or laid out for anyone who wanted to pick over it.

Someone had done a masterful job. That someone was not yet finished. They passed through an untouched area where clutter was piled as high as a man could reach. Most seemed to be old records, moldy, water-stained, likely useless.

The Disciple’s quarters had to be accessed through a cloth-walled room featuring a Matayangan in a loincloth asleep on a pad on the earthen floor. This Matayangan did not like the dark. A tiny lamp wasted oil so the night could be held at bay.

The Matayangans all shared that failing. Lamps burned in the areas adjoining the four cloth walls of El Murid’s space. Night had been an evil time while Matayanga was at war with Shinsan.

Phogedatvitsu and his men slept surrounding the Disciple, which made sense because the man had that penchant for wandering off.

The Matayangans were under the sleep spell, but not deeply. Varthlokkur muttered irritably. Why were they not all snoring like the next to dead?

The Disciple was not asleep at all. They found him sitting up, drowsy, on a western-style camp stool, at a little table. He was trying to write by feeble mutton-tallow candle light. His space retained every bit of smell the candle produced. He evidenced no surprise when he saw Haroun. “You’re back.”

“I am. Come. It’s time to go.”

“I will not cooperate.”

“All right.”

Varthlokkur joined them. “I can’t push them into a deeper sleep. Don’t argue with him. Just get him moving.”

The Disciple gaped. He did not recognize the wizard. There was no reason he should. But he had not seen this demon with a companion before, nor could he imagine the Evil One having an accomplice who would tell him what to do.

Haroun moved closer, ready to gag and bind the Disciple.

Yasmid, yawning, sleepily confused, pushed in. “I keep hearing voices, Father… Oh! What…? You?” She froze.

Haroun stopped moving. How weak a sleep spell had the wizard cast? Varthlokkur grumbled, “Maybe it’s the geography. It happens where the ley lines are warped. Or they might be partially immune.”

Haroun was not listening. Even a blind shaghun could smell this truth. “We have to take her, too.”

“What?” The wizard was at work on the Disciple because Haroun had lost focus.

“She’s pregnant. My responsibility. I can’t leave her…”

That stopped the wizard cold. He shivered, shook his head. “Fate takes some damned strange channels. All right, do what you have to, but do it now! Do it fast! We’re still slipping back on time.” He nudged El Murid, who was now grinding to the conclusion that his situation was worse than he had thought.

Haroun told Yasmid, “You have two minutes to get anything you can’t leave behind. Don’t argue. You know what will happen if you stay. Nothing will save you. Nothing will save our child. So move. Now. The wizard is in a hurry.”

“The wizard is in a hurry, indeed. But the wizard has family, too, and understands the compulsions. Will she run screaming if I relax the sleep spell?”

“No.” He hoped. He looked his wife, his love, the daughter of his lifelong enemy, in the eye. “Get what you can’t live without.”

Yasmid’s eyes closed as Varthlokkur did something. She bobbed her head. Now she had the emotional freedom to be embarrassed. She did not turn away immediately, though. Haroun grew as frustrated with her as the wizard was with him.

As he started to bark, she said, “Neither Father nor I can manage without the Matayangans.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why you came for him. Not to kill, obviously. He would be dead and you would be gone. So you have some use for him. But he won’t be useful if he doesn’t have the Matayangans to manage him and care for him.”

Varthlokkur looked like a man who needed a good shriek and a chance to fling furniture. “Get moving!” Haroun’s voice was soft but adamant and intense. “Now!” He turned to the wizard. “What can you do?”

…

The Matayangans followed Haroun, Yasmid, and El Murid through the portal, single file, as fast as the device could transfer them. Varthlokkur watched and scowled, shuffled nervously, hearing noises develop as people elsewhere stirred. It was no longer possible to do this unnoticed. Radeachar could not remove the portal unseen. There was no longer any point to repairing the slashed tent roof so the mystery of the Disciple’s disappearance would deepen.

Worse, Old Meddler would have what he needed to assemble a portrait of the plot shaping up against him. He had all the tools available to his enemies, and more. He would be able to research this event, decipher its meaning, then would move because of the forces he saw ranged against him. He would strike soon because he was weak, now, and dared not delay seeing to his own protection.

Impatience moved the wizard again. He had to get back to Fangdred. There was much to be done yet to engineer even a chance of brushing away an assault by the Star Rider.

How much was the slight, secret advantage of having the Old Man and Ethrian worth? How much headway had Mist made getting into their minds and memories?

Varthlokkur did not feel optimistic as he placed a foot on Phogedatvitsu’s behind and shoved the bulky man into the portal, hoping all of him made it through.

He looked up at Radeachar. “Now you. We’ll leave the portal. They may not understand what it is.”

The Unborn soared up and away, refusing.

That needed consideration, Varthlokkur reflected. He had a prejudice against portals himself. An outright dread, really, but he would do what he had to do.

He could not recall the last time Radeachar had refused an instruction-if ever it had.

Did it know something? Or did it just share his fears, magnified?

Questions had to wait.

He stepped in, heart in throat, frightened child inside sure that he would not arrive at the other end.

As he did that, tent staff discovered that the Disciple was not in his quarters. The foreigners were missing, too. The Disciple must have gotten away and they were hunting him through the tent again.

There would be no distress till the portal was found. The mood, then, was baffled consternation. No one knew what it was, or what it meant…

Mist watched bin Yousif arrive, unhappy but apparently not emotionally crippled. A woman followed, badly frightened. She latched onto bin Yousif. Her movements were strained. She was in considerable discomfort. Damn! She was pregnant? Definitely not smart at her age.

The object of the operation followed, wearing a dimwit look like the one so often seen on Ethrian. He was thoroughly confused. He had no idea about transfer portals.

Brown men followed the Disciple at precise intervals.

Mist approached bin Yousif. “Is this an evacuation?”

“Something like. I could not go without Yasmid. She says she and her father will fall apart without the fakirs to keep them together. We had wasted too much time to argue. We can get rid of them here if they are actually useless.”

Mist turned to her garrison commander. “Kei Lin. Feed these people, get them into civilized clothing, and have them physically examined.” She turned back to bin Yousif. “How many more?”

“Just the wizard and the monster.”

“And the wizard has arrived,” Varthlokkur announced, having appeared in time to hear the question. “I’m the last. Radeachar won’t risk the transfer stream. Instead, it will go scouting in the northern desert.”

She asked, “Can you explain all this?” Making a sweeping gesture.

“Hasn’t the King done so already?”

“Why should I believe him?”

Haroun whispered a translation to his woman.

Mist smiled broadly. Fortune had dealt her a royal flush. She had the Disciple and his daughter. There would be no one to hold that movement together, now. And she had the only serious Royalist claimant to the Peacock Throne. His successor was now a scatter of cracked bones.

She said, “We need to move on quickly. We got a fix on our target at the scene of the murders…”

Varthlokkur had a finger in front of his lips. He whispered, “His mother hasn’t been told.”

“All right. Once we get to Fangdred?”

He nodded.

“I have Scalza, Eka, and Nepanthe trying to track the villain. He doesn’t seem concerned. Maybe he doesn’t care if we watch. More likely, though, he doesn’t know that we can watch.”

“That would be a benefit of the Winterstorm. The magic is different. He doesn’t understand it.”

Mist saw him shiver with a sudden suspicion that he might be deluding himself. That old villain had seen the Winterstorm up close. He had every reason for an abiding interest.

She said, “Kei Lin, one more thing. I want these people free of lice, nits, mites, and fleas before we move. Understand?”

He did not, but, “As you wish, Illustrious, so shall it be.”

…

Scalza, with Ekaterina’s assistance, had gotten a scryer locked onto the Star Rider’s horse. “I started out trying to fix it on him… Ouch! Eka!” “That’s for taking credit for something you didn’t do, Worm.” “Yeah? All right. Eka did the brain work. And she’s the first one I’m gonna boil in lead after I take over the world.”

Which jest ignited an uncomfortable silence. One did not joke about such things amongst the mightiest faces of the Dread Empire. That reeked too much of possible wickedness.

Eka said, “He’d trip over his own mutant feet and fall in the cauldron himself if I wasn’t there to look out for him.”

That helped, but only a little.

Red-faced, Scalza focused on his task. “Well, anyway, we couldn’t lock it on him. He has some kind of protection that keeps that from happening. So we tried to lock onto the Horn thing because he’s always got that with him. Same thing, so we tried his horse and that worked.” Varthlokkur said, “It’s an insoluble problem with no satisfactory answer. Knowing where the horse is doesn’t tell us why the rider went there and it doesn’t tell us what he’s doing.”

Mist asked, “Can the Unborn keep an eye on him?”

“It could. But he would notice. That would cost me my best tool.” “Is he really that powerful?”

“We don’t know, do we? And that’s the point. There’s no telling what powers and resources he has. We do have someone who can tell us, though. Don’t we?”

Among the mob jammed in there were Mist’s mind specialists. The senior of the two stuck to the Old Man, talking softly, studying every move he made on the shogi board. His associate focused on Ethrian and Nepanthe, often involving the boy in a puzzle that required him to manipulate wooden blocks in different shapes and colors. After hassling her brother some more Ekaterina went to watch Ethrian fiddle with those. She had trouble not helping but Ethrian was getting lazy, counting on her to make things easier for him.

The specialist let her do nothing but offer encouragement. She had it bad for someone just getting into the high drama phase of a girl’s life. Were Ethrian normal her imagination would not have pushed her into such strong fantasies. His obsession with Sahmaman would have sucked the life out of that.

Ekaterina was brighter than the quietly smart, shy child she pretended.

She was more introspective than most girls her age. Further, her little brother was the only child she knew. She owned an unusually adult outlook. That included an appreciation of her own emotional landscape. It headed off nothing before it happened but did make it possible for her to analyze and understand after the fact. She was scared that the real, secret Ekaterina could become one truly frightening adult.

Meantime, she had her crush on her cousin and it was all she could do to keep that hidden and manageable. Manageable she managed, but, hidden, not so much. Everyone with eyes and a brain sniffed that out. The puppy love amused everyone. Folks were kind enough not to torment her, Scalza being the exception. Little brothers have obligations. The specialist who focused on the Old Man said, “We can now touch the level we needed to reach to get the information you want, Illustrious. If I put him into a deep trance he’ll do the rest.” He had been preparing the Old Man for hypnosis since he had arrived. The Old Man’s memory problems were not the result of physical damage. The emotional scarring, though, was serious.

Mist said, “I’m counting on you, Academician Sue.”

“I understand. We need to talk about the desert people, too.”

“Desert people?”

“The ones the wizard brought. Neither Lum nor I speak their language. The only available translators are bin Yousif and the sorcerer. The former is marginally capable because he spent time in one of our prisons-unfortunately Lioantung. Those people have an accent so thick they practically speak their own dialect, which he then butchers with an accent of his own.”

“I see.”

“And I’m not confident of the wizard’s translations. He’s your ally, Illustrious. You know him best. Is his agenda at variance with ours?”

“I ask myself frequently. And I can’t give you a definitive answer. My guess is, he’ll be reliable so long as the greater threat exists. He’s put himself square on target for that one, possibly deliberately.”

She looked round, did not see Varthlokkur. He had said nothing about leaving so must be somewhere in the castle. He should not be gone long. He hated leaving outsiders unsupervised in his space. Mist wished he would stay where she could keep an eye on him. “Do the best you can. I’ll find an interpreter you can trust.”

She looked around again. Scalza was focused on the Star Rider, Nepanthe on events in Kavelin. Ekaterina was beside Ethrian, who had abandoned his puzzle in favor of watching the shogi wars from behind Lord Kuo. When did Wen-chin do any work? She seldom caught him in the act but he was always caught up.

The game ended. Victorious, Lord Kuo abandoned his seat. Ethrian and Ekaterina crowded in opposite the Old Man. Eka began resetting the board.

Old man and boy shared a conspiratorial grin.

Scalza called, “Mother, I need you here.”

…

A man with a donkey herd and saddle horses to wrangle ought not to be able to manage much in the way of stealth. Donkeys did not present the nasty challenges offered by camels and mules but they did harken to a unique drummer, in a dimwitted sort of way. They needed close care and inspired supervision. So how could the killer of a king stay out of sight for so long?

Old Meddler was baffled.

Eventually, he decided that someone must be masking the killer from afar. After operating on that premise a while, though, he changed his mind. Even disguised, all those animals would leave a big scat trail and a route stripped of greenery.

The old devil decided that he could not find his man because his man was not out there to be found. He was no longer on the move.

Old Meddler had existed in this world for millennia, and in another for ages before that. His mind was a clutter of ten thousand times the memories of the oldest mortals around. Outside the moment and task at hand that could be a sink of confusion, a cat’s cradle of memories mixed and tangled, fragmented and partially lost. He sometimes enjoyed crystalline recollections of events two thousand years gone but modern memories eluded him even when he knew they were there. Till he actually saw it, and considered it from up close, he did not remember the Imperial watchtower.

There were donkeys and horses at a pool in the shade of the tower. They had stripped every plant. The killer was nowhere to be seen.

A faint, almost echoing call came on the breeze, drifting down from the battlements. He looked up, expecting to glimpse a pale white child’s face. That left him frowning. Why did he think that?

He probed the spell suite that had drawn the killer to the tower. He had done good work back then… He remembered the place now.

His mood collapsed.

He had not shut everything down once he finished manipulating the boy who would become the King Without a Throne.

Troubling, that. An inexcusable lapse. He should review all his recent work, though the blunder was harmless enough-except to the rare traveler who wandered into range of the haunting call.

He tried to get to the tower from above, as in the old days, but his mount shied off. It refused two further attempts. Could it sense something that he did not? Though unlikely, the chance should not be ignored. Silly to force something dangerous.

Could someone have converted the tower into a deathtrap? Improbable, but improbable death had stalked him a thousand times. Death had her eye on him now, and was sharpening her claws, he was sure.

It was the season to indulge in a psychotic level of caution.

He brought the winged horse to earth near the pool. The donkeys still carried their travel packs, the horses their saddles. The killer had become too entranced to take care.

He did not ease their burdens himself, though it would have taken but a moment to have the Windmjirnerhorn deliver fodder and grooms of a golem kind. The idea never occurred.

Obviously, the killer had been taken by the tower. No mystery, that.

A conjured haunting, crocheted from true, wicked ghosts captured and constrained to carry out targeted missions, could endure indefinitely. Numerous such infested the world, many this same devil’s handiwork, abandoned in place once he finished using them.

The old being looked at that ruin, then at his mount. Not a long walk but a walk nevertheless. So much easier just to drop in from above.

Easier. But a stubborn beast made the walk a must. Was there a real threat? Come to think, the original setup made its victim circle the tower several times before the entrance revealed itself. Was the animal just being difficult? Why start at this late date?

He walked. His patience did not last. After one circuit, with his soles and legs aching, he settled onto a boulder and fingered valves on the Windmjirnerhorn while trying to think how best to avoid further exercise.

He spied the dark gap of the entrance, groaned. So. He had to go on in like a regular victim.

He got up. He limped. He ached. How much longer must he endure before his parole finally came through?