by Glen Cook
He eliminated the most obvious traps. Even so, the iron statues triggered several more, better disguised, as they assisted his futile search the next few days.
Old Meddler grew increasingly disgruntled. He had one healthy demon left. The statue smitten by the green light had not moved since. It still communicated but that made it no less an oversize, man-shape heap of scrap.
He had planned to spend a few hours recuperating once he arrived, before investing a few more recovering weapons and tools from hiding places beneath the fortress. Magden Norath had left a lot. Old Meddler had hidden his own reserves here and elsewhere across the archipelago.
He had come to the emergency against which all that stuff had been cached.
Only… The hiding places were empty. Covert after covert, whatever had been hidden was gone, as though someone who knew every cache had systematically rid them of anything that might ever be of use to the Old Meddler.
Hours burned gathered into days of despair. What the hell had happened? Who had happened? Varthlokkur was not plausible. Had some incredibly clever Tervola matured unnoticed while developing the skills to root out the Star Rider’s hidden treasures? That reeked, too, but not as badly as the possibility that the bitch Tervola Mist might be responsible.
No. None of that was credible. Those were not people who could resist the temptation to use what had been hidden here. Tervola were dark of heart by definition, nor could Varthlokkur possibly be as goody-goody as he wanted the world to think.
All men did evil when they saw a chance to get away with it.
The Star Rider was a stubborn old beast. Yet another thirty hours of daylight and lamplight went into his search before he surrendered to the fact that every filthy tidbit was gone. The fortress had been stripped.
He had to get back west. Time was fleeing. “Enemy never rests,” he reminded himself, over and over. “Water sleeps, but enemy never rests.” He was not ready to spend the time necessary to look back and find out who had done this and what all they had done. That could cost another week. Meantime, leakage from the small freight portals had begun to weaken the Horn.
He could not destroy those. He needed them—unless he wanted to return to the Place and start over, which would take ages because he had conscripted the best iron statues and most tractable demons already.
Perhaps the universe itself was out to thwart him.
The hours fled on. He should have launched his attack long since, crushing resistance instantly using weapons which even Varthlokkur’s weird sorcery could not withstand. He should have passed through the final fire by now, and be headed back to the Place for a long rest, not still be out here with a stomach gone sour.
By grace of the Horn he learned that his missing treasures were not lost forever. They were out there, in the waters of the strait, thrown there by whoever had robbed him.
The Horn brought several relics ashore. That was a waste. Anything that had been unbroken when it went in had been damaged by the brine and battered by surf and current. Everything had been in the water a long time, not just days. His weakening had begun even before the Deliverer crisis commenced.
“Only one option left. The other islands.” A feeble hope, there. Little of value had been cached elsewhere. There had been no clear need for the redundancy.
His remaining demon hauled him hither and yon, from barren outcrop to empty sand pile. Each cache was as pristine as could be hoped. His enemy had either not known about them or had been unable to reach the lesser islands. His mischief had been incomplete.
Sadly, what he recovered was useless now—though, sweet miracle, he did discover copies of Magden Norath’s research records. Those would be invaluable later.
He would make time for those after he finished. He would go to ground for a generation or two, maybe three, letting his fields lie fallow. New generations would produce ambitious men willing to disdain the lessons of history. And he could rest up and get ready to leap back into the game.
He had done it a hundred times before.
But first he had to push through this.
He realigned his strategy to fit the tools available and what he suspected about the people ranged against him. He brooded over the role of the Dread Empire. He had no concrete evidence but felt certain that Shinsan’s ruling class were actively working against him. Too much cleverness had gone to make him stumble.
His nature compelled him to waste time rehashing every little episode of the past year, looking to tie unrelated events into one cunning campaign, but his grand capacity for conspiracy theory could not pound some events hard enough to make them fit a unified hypothesis.
If it was all connected, he lacked some critical piece of evidence.
He had no time to winkle it out. He had to strike.
As it stood, his enemies—with everyone entangled in the year’s events—appeared to be victims of plain old-fashioned “Shit happens.”
He announced, “It’s time. We begin.”
His pitiful army raised no cheers.
...
Breathless, Josiah Gales said, “It won’t take a sell to convince them that Shinsan might be a problem.”
Inger nodded numbly. That was pure understatement. The spell suppressing emotion in the Thing hall was fading. Chaos was breeding, though the delegates no longer wanted to flee.
Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir stepped past, vaulted the rail, rushed the transfer portal, flung herself at the last Imperial lifeguard. She was half his size but her momentum knocked him sideways.
Dahl Haas shrieked at her to show some goddamned sense! He got there two steps behind her, hammered the man’s helmet with the butt of his belt knife, cracked the nonmetallic material. The blow stunned the man. Several Thing members piled on. Class and ethnicity were not factors.
“Stop!” Inger’s bellow pierced the excitement. “Let him get up.”
The easterner grasped what was expected. He rose slowly, looked around carefully. He had been disarmed. Half his armor had been torn away. He would enjoy a fine crop of bruises if he survived.
Inger said, “That’s enough, people. Josiah, take charge of him. We’ll hear an exchange proposal soon.”
Its nature and details should be revelatory.
The Empress was interested only in Bragi and Michael. She might not know who Babeltausque or the Depar girl were.
Delegates eased away from the captive, awed and wary alike. The easterner submitted. He knew he needed only be patient.
Inger announced, “Stay away from the gateway. It might take you somewhere you really don’t want to go.”
The portal tweeted and crackled. It now canted slightly. The angle was visually disconcerting.
“Josiah, once you have him safe, see if you can’t come up with a way to communicate if they don’t contact us.”
Gales inclined his head. He did little talking anymore. Dr. Wachtel said he was in continuous pain and did not want to take it out on anyone.
Maybe she could exchange the lifeguard for treatment for Josiah. They were good at fixing people in the Dread Empire. Bragi should not have survived. And look what that woman had done for herself… Flash of jealousy. To look that good at her unnatural age!
The gate still hummed. Could she shove Kristen and Haas through, then work a deal to keep them over there?
Probably should not try, sweet as that sounded. Bragi would not approve. And he would be back.
“Josiah, don’t take him far. I need you handy.” On reflection, if she had to trade she would ask for Babeltausque back. Though Bragi might argue, the sorcerer was invaluable.
“Gentlemen, the interruption is over. Take your seats.” She had to milk this while it was fresh.
†
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
WINTER, 1018–1019 AFE:
FIRE AND MANEUVER
Other than an exotic half-breed girl-child, whose beauty nearly unmanned him, no one paid attention to Babeltausque or Carrie. Most were too busy, even whe
n all they did was look over one another’s shoulders. The couple tried their best to stay small and unnoticed, day after day.
The exotic took it on herself to see that they touched nothing in what she called the Wind Tower, a place Babeltausque felt should exist only in fairy tales.
He and Carrie were free to come and go so long as they touched nothing and did not get underfoot. Slyly, the exotic girl explained that they could leave whenever they wanted—if they could find a way out and were ready to cross the Dragon’s Teeth in winter.
The girl was curious about Carrie, jumpy around him, and reluctant to chat. She seldom left her young man long enough for a conversation, anyway.
She impacted Babeltausque like a kick to the heart of his fantasies but he managed his weakness.
Carrie murmured, “She is incredible, isn’t she?” No doubt to remind him that in this place self-control came under the heading Life or Death. “I saw her once when we were little. I envied her so much.”
“I won’t lie, darling. She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. But she is more dangerous than a bushel of cobras.” She intimidated him in more than just the survival mode. The girl had a sinister psychic air that no one else seemed to notice.
The eastern Empress emerged from a transfer portal. Lord Yuan followed. Mist and her Tervola henchmen had vanished shortly after their return from Kavelin, leaving King Bragi in charge. Varthlokkur had gone soon after they did. Ragnarson seemed confused. There was nothing for him to do. He hung around with a dour, dark man from Hammad al Nakir, also supposedly a king, and with that man’s wife. That marriage seemed totally bizarre. She was in the throes of a difficult pregnancy. She was too old to be carrying a child. The three spent hours at a time gathered together not saying a thing.
Varthlokkur’s wife kept things going.
And that man, yonder, was the Disciple? Truly? And that one was the Old Man of the Mountain? And that other one was Kuo Wen-chin, who was once Lord Protector of Shinsan?
Fortune had delivered him into such company?
Carrie murmured, “And this is her mother, which explains so much.”
Yes, indeed. Even he was smitten, though his need insisted that they be so much younger.
The Empress announced, “That’s done. Now we wait.”
Babeltausque had little real idea what was happening. Nobody explained. What he knew he figured out from what he overheard in the few conversations in languages he could understand. He was not asked to contribute. He had nothing to do. He and Carrie were putting in hours till Mist had time to swap them for a lifeguard who had gotten left behind.
Carrie was more daring than he. She tackled the crowd, engaged in conversations where she could. Her luck was limited. Few spoke her language. Those who did were inclined to shy away because she was intimate with a sorcerer.
The Ekaterina girl had implied that she and her brother had spied on their private moments. Scalza thought it a great dirty joke. Ekaterina was troubled.
These people had bigger worries. At some level each was working to end the tyranny of the Star Rider.
Just the thought sparked terror. It showed more hubris than would mocking the gods themselves. The gods did not meddle in mundane affairs anymore.
Babeltausque surveyed the crowd while hugging Carrie close, her proximity offering reassurance. If he understood correctly, these misfits had generated all the information Varthlokkur and the Empress needed.
Where had the wizard gone? He had spent time close up with the Old Man before leaving. Babeltausque thought he was on a spoiling mission unconnected with Mist’s operation.
...
Radeachar carried Varthlokkur over and around what had to be the Place of the Iron Statues. There was little to be seen: rocky hill country spotted by scraggly oaks, stunted pines, breaks of scrub brush, and dried brown grass. Varthlokkur saw no running water. He saw nothing manmade. He looked in from a variety of angles in changing light and never saw anything remarkable.
And yet he sensed the presence of something there.
No angle showed him the entrance he had been told to seek.
He saw nothing even vaguely familiar. If he had visited before, that had been erased from his memory.
The echo of a memory that did haunt him was of something resembling a crowded old Itaskian graveyard, behind grey stone walls wearing lichens and creepers. There should be massive wrought-iron gates. Inside, there should be forests of monuments. Amongst those would be iron statues and statues in noble stone.
Varthlokkur could see no ground that looked suitable for such a graveyard.
He did discover redundant protective barriers unlike those associated with other masks for reality, such as the one surrounding the temple Ragnarson had found outside Vorgreberg.
He decided that his memories must have been distorted by an outside influence.
As Radeachar settled to earth Varthlokkur began to entertain a new concern: How to get inside if the Place had gone through a makeover and the Old Man’s recollections were obsolete?
That one had been sure that the Star Rider would have changed nothing. There had been no need. Old Meddler was lazy. He lived in permanent crisis mode, concerned only with the disaster of the moment, seldom bothering with preventative work or the grand scale equivalent of housekeeping. When Varthlokkur asked how that gibed with the vast, complex, generations-long schemes the Star Rider wove, the Old Man just shrugged. Those were something else. They interested the Star Rider. Someone who wanted to bother could work out the psychology.
Radeachar had its own sense for the magical, if little inclination to report it.
Once Varthlokkur set his feet down he saw what he sought so exactly that he knew it must be his expectations reflected, yet could be taken as real for today’s purposes.
The one expectation the place did not meet was an aggressive defense. It did nothing even when he touched the gate. The Old Man had said that the entrance would be the most dangerous part. Once he was inside he would belong. If he did not belong he would not have been allowed in, would he?
Carefully, by the numbers, hoping the Old Man had lost nothing during his prolonged mental holiday, the wizard executed the rituals that would let him enter. The Unborn floated behind. Varthlokkur wondered if it owned a sense of time. He could recall no situation where it had become impatient.
Screaming, the gates swung in a few feet. Rust chunks broke off the hinges. Old Meddler had not come and gone here.
Inside, the Place conformed to his recollections. It was a cemetery—where the tombstones and stelae told no tales. Time had erased most every inscription. The rare partial survivors were incised in alien characters. There was no reason, in fact, to conclude that this was an actual burial ground. It simply resembled familiar cemeteries—and was a product of his own mind, anyway.
There were mausoleums, too, more weathered than the simpler monuments, suggesting that they were older. He was curious but did not step away from his mission. Foolish to open a box, the contents of which were unknown and might be deadly.
The few iron statues all appeared to be damaged. Several were down, overgrown, and sinking into the soil. The most damaged were also the rustiest. Those with the least rust nevertheless lacked a hand, a foot, or showed signs of having been hit violently by something at least as hard as they were.
Varthlokkur had seen iron statues in action only once. Nothing had stopped or slowed them, but that time their advent had been a total surprise. Still, even forewarned, he feared sorcery would not slow them. On the other hand, the efficacy of natural law was persuasive here.
He selected the least-impaired-looking statue and told Radeachar to proceed as planned.
The first challenge was to find out if Radeachar could shift one of the damned things.
They looked heavy.
Not too heavy for Radeachar, though it did strain.
The Unborn soared till it and the statue were a speck. The Place’s boundary membrane seemed infinitely
elastic from inside.
The statue ended its plunge on granite flagging, surviving better than Varthlokkur expected. No pieces flew off.
The Unborn repeated the cycle again and again, enjoying itself. It wore down quickly, though. That was not good. They had to get back to Fangdred once the damage was done. Old Meddler would attack soon. The trap had to be armed and set. This was just to make sure the villain would remain hamstrung after that dust settled.
Radeachar had dealt with the soundest statues. Varthlokkur had hoped to achieve more. Had hoped to come across better opportunities to do mischief. Loss of the iron statues would have to do.
Still… He probed gently, cautiously, everywhere, but learned very little. This was all beyond him and more mechanical than his mind was equipped to handle. His inclination was to loose a storm of generally destructive sorcery to rip the place up, on a scale not seen since the Fall. Totally liberal vandalism would ruin the Star Rider.
The graveyard feel restrained him. The uneasy sense that he should not. Destruction could break things open.
There might be more here than appearances suggested. It now felt like not all those graves might be empty. Like some contained tenants who were wakening.
Could the Place be a prison for the restless dead as well as Old Meddler’s home base?
Could be. It might contain some of the world’s oldest horrors. Or enemies Old Meddler had conquered in ages past.
There might be places here reserved for Varthlokkur and the Empress.
That such an alien notion entered his head left him more wary. It did not feel like original inspiration. Something wanted him worried and scared.
It was an old, old world haunted by countless secrets. Sorcerers built themselves by using evils claimed from colleagues who had gone before them, who had grown fearsome in their own time by taking from the dead who had preceded them.
This was the fate of any sorcerer of attainment. One accepted it as the price of power today—or shied away from, whining, by those who would deny the inevitable.
A thousand Magden Noraths, and worse, had come, then gone. Ten thousand more would follow, every one cannibalizing his predecessors. The Great One demonstrated that a horror clever enough and stubborn enough could persist beyond death by establishing itself in the very skin of reality.
