by Glen Cook
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 Kotsüm.
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?”
“Urgenc
y? 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.
