Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  He made another boorish noise.

  Unruffled, she pressed his arm. “Chup, do you doubt that I would like to be the lady of a viceroy?”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  Her nails spurred his forearm. “And do you think that I would want some lesser man than you beside me, one who could not hold such a prize when we had won it, or try for something higher still. By all the demons, you underrate me if you do!”

  Viceroy, Lord of High Lords…armies numbering tens of thousands under his command…beside him, Charmian, looking as she did now. He could no longer wholly doubt what she was saying. “Has Viceroy Som no need of you, to hold his place and help him try for something higher still?”

  Her eyes flashed anger, mixed with determination. “I want a living man, not dead…but you are right, my lord, Som is the key. We must dispose of him.” She said it easily. “He gave me shelter when my father fell, thinking I would be useful to him one day; I convinced him you would be useful too. He does not know that you have brought the means of his downfall.”

  Chup’s manner was still scornful. “And what are we to do with Som the Dead? How shall we topple him?”

  Her eyes, that had gone to feast upon some distant vision, came back to his unwaveringly. “The circlet woven of my hair must go into his private treasure hoard, unknown to him. Only thus can he be made vulnerable to—certain magic that we shall use against him.”

  “He must have protection against such charms.”

  “Of course. But Hann says that the one you carry is of unequalled power.”

  Chup said: “You speak much of this wizard Hann, and what he says. What does he gain, by helping you?”

  Charmian pouted. “I see I must soothe down your pointless jealousy again. Hann wants only vengeance, for some punishment that Som inflicted on him long ago. I know that Hann gives no impression of great skill at magic, yet he is stronger in his way than Elslood was, or Zarf—”

  “Then why can he not make a stronger charm than Elslood wrought?” He thought he could feel it in his pocket, like a circle of heavy fire.

  She shook her head impatiently. “I do not understand it perfectly, but it seems that Elslood, wanting me to care for him, stole some of my hair and wove the charm. But he tapped some power greater than he understood, the charm only made him dote all the more on me. Never mind. We need not struggle with these technicalities of magic. All that you need worry about, my lord, is getting the charmed circlet woven of my hair into Som’s private treasure hoard.”

  “How?”

  “I have already gone far in learning ways and making plans for that. But the execution of the plan requires someone like yourself, my lord; and who is there but you?”

  “How?” His voice was still heavy with his skepticism.

  She seemed about to tell him, but first she recounted once more the joys of being viceroy. Her soft voice wore him down, so that he passed the midpoint between doubting and belief; all things were possible, when his bride whispered that they were.

  Now she was telling him what he must do: “Now hear me, my lord. Three things must fall together ere we strike. First, the human guards who watch the outer entrance to the treasure vault must be those we have suborned. Second—are you listening?—the new breed of centipedes in the second room must not yet have hatched. Thirdly, the word for quieting the demons in the inner vault must be the one we know…”

  Demons again. He ceased to listen. He was wearying quickly of all these endless words, even if they came from her, when she herself was here. Shaking his head to break the spell of words, he reached for her.

  “My lord, wait. Hear me. This is vital—”

  But he would not wait, nor hear her any longer, and with a small sigh of vexation she let him have his way.

  On the next day, when he had truly rested, there came to him officers of Som’s Guard, who wished to question Chup about the military situation in the West. Chup related the rumors common in the Broken Lands, for what they might be worth. He told the officers what he had observed of troop movements, from his beggar’s post, and of other matters bearing on the military, the conditions of roads and livestock in the Broken Lands, the feelings and prosperity of the populace, the state of the harvest. He could give the Guardsmen little comfort, except as regarding the relative smallness of Thomas’s force. Thomas would need great reinforcement before he could attempt an attack upon this citadel.

  Chup was soon sitting at ease with the officers, military men like himself. He was now dressed like them in a uniform of black, except that he had as yet no rank, and of course no Guardsman’s collar. In the course of exchanging soldiers’ talk he asked about the collars. He could not imagine how it would feel to enter a fight with the knowledge that you could be glued together again if you were hacked apart; would it be a spur or a hindrance to the most effective action? Would a man who wearied let himself be killed to gain a rest?

  One of the officers shook his head, and raised one finger. It ended in a tiny abnormal loop of flesh, instead of a fingernail. “The healing’s not that safe or certain. Things sometimes go wrong, up in Lord Draffut’s house. A man who’s badly mangled going in may well come out too crooked to walk straight. And those who’ve been too long lifeless when the valkyries pick ’em up may never again be smarter than little animals.”

  The other officer nodded his scarred head. “Still,” he said, “I think none of us are likely to turn in our collars.”

  “See much fighting here?” Chup asked.

  “Not since we came here, and Draffut handed out his collars; he was here first, you know, before the East or West…We do grow somewhat stale, those of us who stay inside these mountains. Nothing but a peasant uprising from time to time. But we practice. We’ll handle this Thomas if he comes.”

  Chup was invited to visit the officers’ club on a lower level of the citadel, where wine and gambling and fresh peasant girls were available. He got up and strolled with the two men to sample the wine; as for the dice and the women, he had no money at the moment, and could not imagine himself wanting any woman but one.

  Walking the main, buried corridors of the citadel Chup took note of the fighting men he saw. He supposed the garrison might number a thousand if all were mobilized; but the five hundred elite Guardsmen should be easily able to hold the natural defenses of the place against Thomas’s four thousand or so. A few of the Guardsmen were grotesquely misshapen with old scars, of wounds no man could ordinarily survive, though they were active still; this confirmed what the officer had said about the uncertainty of being healed.

  Chup had other things to watch for on his walk to the officers’ club and back again, through rooms and passages carved from the mountain’s rock. In one large chamber, decorated with some ancient artisan’s frieze of unknown men and creatures, he spotted without paying it any obvious attention the entrance to the passage that Charmian had told him to watch for. It was an unmarked tunnel leading downward and yet farther into the mountain. It was this way that, by many turns and branches shed had described, would lead him to Som’s own treasure hoard.

  Again and again during the next two days she repeated her instructions to him; by then he had ceased to doubt her word on anything at all. And then she awoke him in the night, to tell him that the time had come, the three requirements had fallen together. Tomorrow he must try to reach the treasure vault of Som.

  He strode into the high, frieze-corniced room with the air of a man upon some important errand, as indeed he was. The room was an intersection of two corridors, and held people passing continually to and fro. No one paid attention as Chup turned aside into the downward way that led toward the treasure; it led to other things as well, and was not guarded here.

  Chup walked unarmed with any blade or club; he must not kill today, must leave no traces of his passage. For weapons, he carried Charmian’s knowledge of Som’s secrets, gathered he knew not how, but trust her to manage that, in a world of men; and his own boldness, and speed of mi
nd and body; and three words of magic; and a pocketful of dried fruit, innocent to the eye and taste. Hann had demonstrated that a human might eat of it without effect.

  A few people passed Chup, coming toward him through the tunnel he descended. Then the way branched, once and again, and now there were no other walkers. The branch that Chup had been taught to follow was a narrow way, and it went on without another intersection for some distance. Now and then it broke out of its walls into a large cave, where it formed a suspended walkway across chasms whose depths were lost in darkness. Sunlight filtered down into the big caves through hidden openings somewhere high above. Along the buried parts of the way, a few cheap lampstands cast some illumination. There were no signs, nor any evidence that any goal of much importance lay in this direction.

  So far, all was as Charmian had foretold. And now, here, just as she had said, the path bridged a wider crevasse than usual, and then branched once more. The right way, she had told him, led up into the viceroy’s private quarters. The left side, narrower, was the one that Chup must take.

  Now at last there were posted warning signs. Chup had no doubt of what they meant, though he did not stop to try to puzzle out the letters. He also ignored another, blunter, warning: a bundle of mummied hands that were no doubt supposed to be those of would-be trespassers hung like a cluster of dried vegetables above the way. He moved his head slightly as he walked beneath, not wanting the dead fingers to brush his hair. His pulse went quicker. If he were stopped and questioned now, it would be hard to say convincingly that he had seen no warning.

  A final abrupt turn, and Chup’s path came to an end against a massive, unmarked door. This too he found as Charmian had described it: so strongly built that a ram would be needed to break it down. Having no sword hilt to rap out a signal with, Chup put his knuckles to the job. The door resounded no more than would a massive tree stump, but someone must have been listening for the little noise, for it was answered quickly. A dim face peeked out at Chup through a small grill. A sliding of bars and rattle of chains, and the great door moved inward just enough for him to enter.

  He stepped into a barren, rock-walled chamber about ten meters square. The two men in Guardsmen’s collars standing watch had been given no chairs or other furniture to lure them into relaxation. Directly across from the door where Chup had entered, a ladder five or six meters long stood leaning against the wall; beside the ladder was the room’s only visible aperture besides the door, a narrow hole that led down into darkness. Thick candles in wall sconces lit the guardroom adequately.

  One of the men who greeted Chup was hardly more than half a man in size, his legs being grotesquely short. The other guard was of ordinary stature, and sound of limb, but his face was the strangest Chup had ever seen on living man, a wall of scars from which one live eye gleamed like something trapped. According to Charmian, these men had been enlisted in her cause by promises of better healing when she came to power. The two of them closed up and chained and barred the great door tight as soon as Chup was through it; and then they looked at Chup expectantly, but saying nothing.

  He had wasted no time either, but had crossed the chamber to look down into the hole. He could see nothing in the darkness there. “Where’s the beast?” he asked. “I mean, in which part of its room?”

  The scarred man made a nervous sound. “Hard to say. You’ve got some means of putting it to sleep?”

  “Of course. But I’d like to know just where to toss the bait.”

  They came and stood beside him at the hole, peering down and listening, muttering to each other, trying to locate the beast. They were nervous for his welfare. If his attempt miscarried down below, their complicity in it would be discovered when Chup—alive or dead—was found. It seemed a long time before the dwarfed man raised a hand for Chup’s attention, and pointed to a quarter of the room below. Bending over the pit, straining his ears, Chup thought he could barely hear a dry patter that must be made by the beast’s multitude of feet.

  “There, there, yes,” the scarred man whispered. “It’ll be behind you as you go down the ladder.”

  They got ready for him the long ladder—Chup saw now that it was really an extremely slim and elegant stair, complete with hand-rail, fit for Som to use when he went down to count his gold—and now they slid the ladder down.

  Chup went down facing the ladder, about one third of its length, before he tossed his first piece of dried fruit. He heard the hundred feet shiver before he saw the rail-thin, cat-quick body; he could not tell for sure whether the bait had been taken. Hann had said that two pieces swallowed should afford Chup time enough to complete his mission. He let his eyes become somewhat more accustomed to the gloom before he tossed a second bait, and he saw this one snapped up by the first pair of delicate legs, flicked up into the tiny, harmless mouth. A moment only passed before the beast shivered, twitched extravagantly, and began to curl its body. Its hundred legs in disarray, it slid down springily to the floor, showing Chup as it bent the hundred branching slivers of its whiplike tail.

  Chup cautiously went down the rest of the ladder. The centipede remained completely quiet. He left the ladder and paced toward the door that led to the next lower level; and now the dryness of fear was growing in his throat. Behind him he heard the ladder being drawn up; so it had been planned, in case some officer should come while he was down below.

  There was a bloated bulk of darkness that he only just avoided stepping on, when it made a feeble movement in his path. He had been told of this also. It had been a man, and was still alive, nourishing the larvae of the centipede inside itself. Perhaps its hands would someday join the thieves’ bundle over the tunneled walk; perhaps it had in fact once been a would-be thief.

  In the faint light from below he could make out the way to the next lower level: an ordinary doorway led to a simple solid stair of stone, narrow and curving but quite open. What was below had no desire nor occasion to come up, and the centipede would be too frightened to go down.

  Chup went down, armed with the three words of magic Hann had taught him. They weighed now like swallowed arrows in his throat, syllables not fit for ordinary men to bear. Chup went down the curving stair, and before him the increasing light carried a hint of the color of gold.

  As he had been instructed, Chup counted the turnings of the stair, and stopped on what should be the last, before the source of light ahead could come into his view. There he drew in his breath, and said, clearly and loudly, pausing after each word, the three words of the incantation.

  With the first word, there fell a silence in the air, where before he had only thought the air was silent; there had been a certain quiet murmuring that he was not aware of until it ceased.

  With the second word, the light in the room below was dimmed, and the air became fresh and ordinary, where before he had only thought that it was so; and time began to make itself felt, so that Chup perceived the age in all the slimy stones that built the vault surrounding him.

  The third word of the incantation seemed to hang forever on his tongue, but when he had said it, time flowed on once more as it should. The golden light before him grew as bright as ever; a certain rippling watery reflection in it had been stopped so it was steady, where before he had only thought that it was so.

  With that Chup went on down, walking into Som’s treasure room through its sole entrance. The vaulted chamber was round and high, perhaps twenty meters across. The golden light came from the center of it, seemingly from the treasure itself. It lay in careless-looking heaps, for the most part brilliant yellow metal, coins and jewelry, bars and foldings of gold leaf; here and there the piles were studded with the sharper glint of silver or the brighter flash of gems.

  The treasure was still sealed from Chup by a last encircling fence, of what seemed fragile metal wands. He had no need to cross that barrier or worry about it. Instead he looked up at once to the upper vaulting of the high chamber. By the light of the ensorceled treasure, he saw that up there the seven
guardian demons hung, where Hann’s three words had sent them, like malformed bats in fine gray gossamer robes. They were head down, with arms or forelegs—it was hard to specify—that hung below their heads. Several of the dangling limbs hung nearly to the level of Chup’s head, so elongated were the demons’ shapes. One had a gray blur of a talon run like a fishhook through the hide of small furry beast, a living toy that struggled and squeaked incessantly to be free, and very slowly dripped red blood. As Chup watched the demons, they began to drone, like humans newly fallen asleep who start to snore.

  With a shudder he pulled his gaze down and stepped forward. He stood staring for just a moment in awe at the accumulated wealth before him. He thought he had seen riches before, and owned some too. But he had known only handfuls compared to this.

  The moment of distraction passed; what drove him had far more power over him than greed. Taking now from his pocket the golden circlet of Charmian’s hair—infinitely brighter in his eyes than any hoard of metal—he held it up before him in both hands. He was reluctant ever to let it go. But after all it was the woman he wanted, not her token. It was for the sake of their future life together that he must give away the charm; for no other reason could he have parted with it now.

  He tossed it from him, over the innocent-looking fence of fragile rods, toward the piled-up wealth. As it passed from his fingers it seemed to draw from him a greater spark than ever man might get by rubbing cloth and amber; and with this spark, invisible for all its power, Charmian’s image in his mind was smashed and shattered as in a broken mirror.

  Under the blow, Chup lurched forward two steps, hands outstretched and groping. Like one aroused from sleep-walking he blinked and cried out incoherently. His case was all the worse for his remembering all the nightmare that had brought him here; nightmare magic, that had made him trust his bride…

  Tightly he squeezed shut his eyes, forgetting for the moment even the dreaming, droning, blinded demons over his head as he tried to call back Charmian’s face. He visualized her now as beautiful as ever. But now, freed of the potent charm, he recognized her beauty as nothing but a mask worn by an enemy.