Wrath of Kings

by Glen Cook

  “I haven’t yet dropped your name into conversation but I have been given permission to use a particular piece of property as I see fit.” He explained.

  “I would be a prisoner in that tower instead of here.”

  “It’s the best you can expect.”

  Kuo smiled a tired smile.

  “Somewhat less than optimal for you,” Shih-ka’i said. “The food will be better.”

  “And what would be the attitude of the Empress toward Kuo Wen-chin these days?”

  “She has none. She never mentions you.”

  Both Tervola glanced at the old man. Though he moved slowly he did his share. He hummed as he began clearing away. The tune was catchy but unfamiliar.

  Kuo said, “I can’t abandon him.”

  “Uhm?”

  “He’s better than he was but he’s not ready to take care of himself.”

  “I wouldn’t leave him. He may be a link to the history of this place.” Shih-ka’i paused briefly. “Magden Norath is dead. A serendipitous thing. This was his headquarters, once.”

  The old man ceased humming. “Ehelebe,” he said, then got lost in his own mind again.

  “I can’t divine the past,” Kuo said. “I’m sure there is interesting historical stuff to be found here. If I could. Unfortunately, a clever man might use the same tools to manage long distance communications.”

  Shih-ka’i replied, “You would know better than I. I’m not the technical sort.”

  “I’ll move if my friend comes, too.”

  “Definitely not a problem.”

  “On the other hand, permitted the tools, I could make a career of exploring this island’s yesterdays.”

  “We might consider that after the Empire relaxes and persons of stature have become less paranoid about what ancient sorceries potential rivals might be unearthing.”

  Kuo Wen-chin sighed. “I understand. I don’t like it, but my likes are irrelevant. It isn’t just Norath and Ehelebe, either. This place is ages older than that. This may have been the Star Rider’s base before the Pracchia betrayed it and the Deliverer drew attention to it.”

  The old man, moving glacially, twitched or winced each time Kuo said a name. Neither Tervola missed that. And neither believed the old guy understood why he responded that way.

  Shih-ka’i said, “I do think it’s a good idea to keep him close.”

  “Yes. I’m ready to leave when you are.”

  “We should disguise you. The transfer operators might recognize you.”

  Kuo said, “I’ll be a bodyguard. The old man can be a prize we’re moving for safekeeping.”

  The timing was coincidental but the Star Rider visited the eastern island shortly after its evacuation. He had not been there since the flight of the prisoner Ethrian, who had become the Deliverer. He expected the place to have been abandoned. The evidence argued otherwise.

  Use by the Dread Empire was clear. The fortress reeked of Tervola. It was an excellent place to operate quietly. They would be back.

  Old Meddler’s nerves had not yet recovered from the shock of Norath’s murder. Inimical anarchy lurked in every shadow, lately. Experience left him confident that his jumpiness was justified. Ahead lay an age where all the survivors would hammer their imaginations for inventive ways to kill him.

  He rested briefly, then cleared out before he stumbled into any of the booby traps certain to be cleverly disguised.

  Mist reviewed the current status of the portals installed inside Kavelin over the decades. Technicians tended to be apolitical and kept good records. But search results were not encouraging.

  The chief of technical research told her, “Those people were quite skilled at finding and destroying portals once you left.”

  “I know that, Lord Yuan. Portals that aren’t there now don’t interest me. How many survived? Must I have new ones smuggled in?”

  “Several remain but we’ve only just started trying to reconnect with them. I have my cleverest man, Tang Shan, doing the work.”

  “Where would they be?”

  “One is in the caverns behind Maisak. One is in the attic of the house you occupied in exile.”

  “I can’t see them not finding that.”

  “It was a bolt hole type carefully disguised.”

  “And the others?”

  “One more, in the mausoleum of Queen Fiana. It was a sleeper, never activated.”

  “How grotesque. I want the exact status of each by the end of the day.”

  “As you will, Illustrious.”

  Varthlokkur had spent several interesting hours with Ethrian. He did so most mornings, now. This particular morning the boy had sustained his half of a simple conversation. He had asked about Sahmaman no more than a dozen times and appeared to get it when Varthlokkur explained.

  But he did not retain the information.

  The wizard had gotten the boy to practice writing lists of nouns using a charcoal pencil.

  Impatient Scalza demanded, “How soon can we go to the Wind Tower? I want to use my scrying bowl.”

  The boy had blood power. It would be amazing if he did not, with his antecedents. He had learned to manage the scrying bowl in two lessons. With it he did more than spy on his mother. Varthlokkur had given him a watch list of interesting operators to follow.

  Scalza was of an age where peeping tom efforts were an attraction, too.

  Varthlokkur hoped the boy never caught his mother sporting, though he suspected that Mist had lost interest after Valther’s demise.

  “Patience is the first skill the young wizard must master,” Varthlokkur said. “We’ll go after lunch.”

  Scalza headed for the kitchen to find out how long he had to remain patient. Ekaterina trailed him, saying, “Told you so.” Loftily, from the eminence of her superior years.

  “Be quiet, brat.”

  “Ha ha!”

  Varthlokkur watched. The children squabbled constantly, yet remained inseparable. He could not recall one ever being more than ten feet from the other. They would not sleep in separate rooms. When nightmares moved in they ended up in the same bed.

  Varthlokkur worried more than did Nepanthe. She had grown up with a tribe of brothers, younger and older, none of whom treated her different from one another.

  “Varth? Is something wrong?”

  “Nepanthe? No. I got caught up in the old nightmare about what happened to my mother. Again.”

  Nepanthe massaged his shoulders. “Lunch is ready. The children are in a hurry to go upstairs.”

  “Of course. I’m coming. But I… I wonder why I still have trouble with what happened. Only a lunatic would believe that a boy as young as I was could have done anything to keep them from burning a woman who frightened them.”

  “But still you obsess.”

  “I do. Obsession drove me to avenge her. Obsession drove me to win you. And now, despite time-won wisdom, I suffer an intermittent obsession focused on the past.”

  “Come have lunch. It will improve your spirits. Then you can focus on better rat traps.”

  Varthlokkur did as she suggested. A half hour later, in the Wind Tower, he could not remember what he had eaten. Mist’s rascals were too distracting.

  His efforts with Ethrian were paying off but he preferred time spent in the Wind Tower. There he felt like he was getting somewhere in his quest to create that better rat trap.

  He surrounded himself with notes reminding himself that he was not the first. A mobile hung above his work table. Its strings bore twelve cards, each recording known details of a failed effort to rid the universe of the Star Rider. He would find more as he developed more tools to mine truth from the deep past.

  He wanted to dive all the way down to the beginning of the world. To do that his first great task would be to find a means of breaking through barriers set to prevent that, without being noticed. He believed he was making head-way. The research, so far, had not been as difficult as expected. The magic of the Winterstorm, and of the Unborn, were
key. The grand challenge was to remain undetected.

  Others had believed that the answers could be found hidden in deep time. Several master sorcerers of yesteryear had tried mining the secret histories of the world. They had failed. Their digging had hit a tripwire at some point.

  How? Wizards delved the past regularly without drawing fire.

  He began by investigating the investigators. He was a loner. They had been loners. He knew how his mind worked. Their mental processes would have been similar. And he had a big advantage over them.

  He had time. Centuries, if he needed them.

  “Hey, Uncle Varth! Something’s going on in that tower of Mother’s.”

  “What?”

  “They’re bringing in new prisoners.”

  Which likely meant nothing. But he owed Scalza the courtesy.

  Ekaterina leaned on her brother’s left shoulder, enthralled by the quicksilver surface. Scalza, seated, elbows on the table and chin in his hands, was completely engrossed, too.

  Varthlokkur saw nothing remarkable initially. Then he recognized the tallest man: “Kuo Wen-chin! He’s supposed to be dead. I’d better study this. Thank you, Scalza.”

  The boy’s bowl offered visual access only. He could not eavesdrop. That was intentional, so Scalza would not be eavesdropping on his elders.

  Most far-scryers, though, suffered from that handicap. Sound was difficult to capture.

  The device Varthlokkur activated presented a three-dimensional image and did transmit sound, unreliably. As it came to life it revealed something more amazing and exciting than an unexpectedly healthy Kuo Wen-chin.

  Varthlokkur laughed softly, wickedly. This was priceless. More than priceless if Old Meddler did not know.

  That old man might be just what he needed.

  And Ethrian might be the key to that old man.

  Ethrian would be getting a lot more attention now.

  FOURTEEN: 1017 AFE

  GHOSTS OF TANGLED DESTINY

  Yasmid had gone to her father’s tent again. Elwas had claimed a serious breakthrough. She had been excited. He made it sound like El Murid was back.

  Her father disappointed her again. He disappointed Elwas and swami Phogedatvitsu, too. Both really believed that the victory was at hand. El Murid proved them wrong. Yasmid was confident that the sabotage was deliberate.

  “I know what you’re doing, Habibullah. It won’t work. I was there. I saw what I saw. He may be my father. His seed may have quickened my life. His early ministry may have given that life meaning. But the soul inside the man we saw tonight is not that of God’s True Messenger.”

  Habibullah shrank into himself. “More than you do, now, I believe in the foreigner. He will lure the Disciple away from the insidious sway of the Evil One, I am confident.”

  It had grown dark while they were inside her father’s tent. They were returning home now. Light from fires on the field below the New Castle, to their right, and from torches born by Invincible bodyguards, illuminated them. A chip of moon sometimes shone briefly through the grand flocks of clouds cantering westward over the Jebal. Somewhere out there, once the temperature dropped, they would dump their moisture.

  Passing the pilgrim camp, Yasmid observed, “Not much interest in shrines anymore, is there? Pilgrims came by the thousands when I was young.”

  “They tire. The world tires. Many of those pilgrims there now live off the charity of the Believers.”

  A voice from the waste called, “Hai! Is truth unknown to…”

  Whatever followed got snatched away by a gust that promised rain, but those words, in that rhythm, seized the imaginations of Yasmid and Habibullah, both. They stared at one another. Then Yasmid ordered, “Find that man. Whoever he is.”

  Minutes later Invincibles descended on the pilgrim camp.

  Haroun bin Yousif had not survived so long by being slow to recognize his own mistakes. Somehow, suddenly, he had become interesting to some passing Invincibles.

  He faded away immediately, resurfaced in a different guise, amongst people he had believing that they had known him longer than the few days that was the truth.

  Scowling Invincibles with bad scars and parts missing took turns interrogating pilgrims. They were looking for someone but had no idea who. They hoped their quarry would give himself away. Haroun had to relate his life’s story all the way back to his great-grandfather.

  “Of course,” he said. “Anything you want to know, God be praised. My father was Yousef the shoemaker of es Souanna. His father was… But wait! I remember you. We did this just a few days ago.”

  “Hell, he’s right,” said another Invincible. “We did. He’s some kind of mummer. Weren’t you going to head on west with one of the caravans?”

  Haroun recalled having had a hearing problem before. “Yes. But al-Mesali would not let me because of my infected ears. Which started healing as soon as it was too late. I am hoping for better luck next time. Meantime, I am surviving on wild greens salads. What’s up, anyway?”

  “Nobody knows. The Lady and her eunuch heard something while they were passing by here. They went weird. We’re supposed to find somebody without knowing who we’re looking for.”

  “Did you say lady? Your lips are hard to read because of your beard.”

  “The Lady Yasmid, blessings be upon her. Daughter of the Disciple.”

  Haroun tried to look awe-stricken. He had been that close to greatness!

  He had been that close to disaster. He understood that, for the moment, he had eluded an arrow that he had not known was in the air.

  The eunuch mentioned must be Habibullah, who had served Yasmid since she was a child.

  It must be the banter that had betrayed him.

  He asked, “Do you want to look through my things again?”

  How stupid could one man be? And how lucky?

  “No.”

  “This is amazing,” Haroun said. “To think that I was that close. I wish I had known so I could have gotten a glimpse.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen much,” the talkative Invincible said, moving away.

  “Muftaq!” his remaining companion snapped.

  “What? It’s no secret that she’s as homely as the back end of a camel.”

  “You have no right to say such things in front of perfect strangers.”

  Haroun muttered, “I’m definitely not perfect. I wouldn’t be in this fix if I was.”

  The Invincibles moved on, leaving the traveler in furious thought.

  “Could it have been?” Yasmid demanded. “He would have to be mad to be here. Wouldn’t he?”

  Habibullah agreed, in private and aloud. “He would. But his madness has never been in question.”

  Yasmid struggled to shed a maelstrom of conflicting feelings. “You did hear what I heard?”

  “It was the exact singsong the fat man used when we were young. Minus the accent.”

  “Can there be an explanation other than the one our foolish hearts want it to be?”

  “In God’s eyes all things are possible. We’ll know for sure soon enough. The Invincibles will question everyone who isn’t one of them. Anyone suspicious will wind up at your feet.”

  Yasmid said, “Uh-oh.”

  Habibullah said, “I’ll put out a warning not to operate alone. If it is him he won’t scruple to kill a man for his robes.”

  Yasmid said, “I don’t want him slain outright, Habibullah. I want to see him first.”

  “I understand.”

  Watching the door again. Habibullah knowing that. Her knowing that Habibullah had told her what she wanted to hear. She was a woman. She was weak. She would not do what needed to be done. If Habibullah got there first Haroun would die resisting capture.

  Habibullah’s foolish heart did not share the hungers of her foolish heart. Habibullah nurtured an abiding and deadly grudge.

  Haroun indulged in wishful thinking but did not waste time sitting still. Aza was compromised. Aza would be very popular soon. Aza had to e
vaporate off the desert like dew in the morning sun.

  Haroun pawned his cart and contents, and his animals, with a one-eyed rogue known as Barking Snake, a parasite grown fat off desperate travelers. He smelled desperation when Haroun arrived in the night. He took every advantage. Haroun did not argue. He did make a point of remembering the fat face and greasy beard filled with a vulpine smile.

  Haroun had just departed when a dozen Invincibles descended on Barking Snake’s establishment. He listened. The Invincibles were out rousting the usual suspects. Barking Snake lied smoothly, unctuously, while his underlings were still moving reluctant goats in the background.

  Haroun allowed himself a grim smile. Unless he was slicker than he looked Barking Snake would soon be answering questions for which he could offer no satisfactory replies.

  Haroun wore shabby clothing he had acquired from Barking Snake, still smelling of its previous owner, who may have died in it. As a disguise it would be useless soon. Once the hunters knew that Barking Snake had bought Aza’s things they would make him tell them what to look for.

  He considered becoming one of the hunters. But that would be impractical except as a momentary expedient. The old warriors here all knew each other and were working in groups.

  He could not return to being a pilgrim. No Believer would hide him.

  Patrols came close. They failed to catch him mainly because they had no real idea of what they were supposed to find.

  Haroun considered fleeing Sebil el Selib. It was the logical course. But he could not reach the pass back to the east and he was not equipped to survive the desert. With a couple of water bags he could make it to el Aswad.

  They would think of that right away.

  It might be a useful false trail to lay down sometime.

  The need for constant evasion pushed him toward the Disciple’s tent.

  He rested in a shadowed dip fifty feet from that absurd sprawl of canvas. There was activity at its entrance, but only out of curiosity. The guards and staff refused to get caught up in the broader excitement.

  The idea seemed obvious enough. If he could get inside… Rumor said that the interior mostly went unused. A company of horsemen could hide in there.