Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  Tapek almost shouted. 'Do you think that Jiro was my reason for stringent opposition of Mara? She threatens us, you fool! She has greater ambitions than merely a rival's death.'

  Unhappy at the reminder, Kerolo still strove for calm. 'I am neither blind nor always the slave of protocol. But I must insist, brother. With our edict still in force, even were Mara as bloody-minded as some other Lords of our acquaintance, none of the Anasati claimants may be hunted down. We must decide which of them is fittest to assume the Anasati mantle. Come; the matter is too weighty for us to act unilaterally. We must consult the wishes of our brethren.'

  'They are idiots, or worse, accomplices!' Tapek fumed back. He paced over air, spun, and whipped back to stab a finger at his companion. 'I will not stand idle through this crisis! I must act, for the Good of the Empire!'

  Kerolo bowed in stiff-faced opposition to the invocation of the ritual phrase. 'My place is to inform the others.' His hand dropped to his pocket, and his teleportation device buzzed like the whine of an angry insect.

  'Fool!' Tapek spat at the empty air, his word half whirled away by the suck of air left at his brother mage's departure.

  Tapek looked down. Below, under cloudless noon, Anasati and Shinzawai completed the time-honored, paired dance of victor and vanquished.

  Then, as if their actions were of no more consequence to him than the buildings and the battles of insects, they were abandoned to their own devices as he, too, reached for his device and departed.

  29

  Destruction

  The air snapped.

  Tapek materialised fifty feet up in the air in a new location, many miles to the south of Jiro's death site. The magician's expression was vexed. His hunt to pin down the location of Mara's litter promised difficulty, since she, unlike Jiro, had chosen her route for subterfuge. Her Force Commander had admitted as much, when he confessed her choice of back roads. Tapek shook a stray lock of hair from his eyes and gazed intently down on the landscape. Hwaet fields stretched below, gold turning dull brown, for the harvest was neglected. A dusty road wound parallel to a creek bed, dry once more in keeping with the season. Nothing moved but a needra bull, pacing the confines of his pen. His herd boy lay under a tree, twitching off flies in the steamy heat. Since he had no reason to glance up, he failed to notice the magician hovering directly overhead.

  To Tapek's outlook, the slave boy had as little consequence as the flies. The magician crossed his arms and drummed his fingers against his sleeves. A search by line of sight was not going to be effective: the territory where Mara was likely to be was simply too large. Urgency ate at him. Kerolo had left something of significance unsaid, the red-haired mage was convinced of it. Why else should anyone of his arcane abilities feel the need to rush like a child to report to the Assembly?

  What was Mara plotting, that she should have dared give attack orders to her troops on the Plain of Nashika? Tapek licked his lips, brooding. The woman was devious. Even if Jiro's death was not her doing, but solely the province of Hokanu, still, someone representing the Assembly should seek her out, if only to make apprehending her easier when fat windbags like Hochopepa were finally forced to acknowledge her transgression. The Assembly would move from words to punitive action, Tapek had no doubt. Nothing else could come of the fact that their absolute authority had been compromised.

  A spell of finding should suffice to track the Lady, Tapek resolved. His midair stance unnecessary for such a conjuring, he let himself settle slowly toward the ground. As his feet touched earth, the needra bull winded a snort of alarm, curled up his tail, and bolted. Its herd boy roused with a start. He saw the magician as he scrambled to his feet. With a cry of fear, he flattened himself in terrified obeisance, belly to the earth.

  The needra bull thundered on toward the far fence, turned, and circled. Its hooves chewed up good grass. But in the fearful presence of a Black Robe, the slave feared to rise and calm it.

  Which was proper, Tapek reasoned; the populace should feel nothing but awe toward those of his rank. Tapek ignored both boy and beast. Self-absorbed, he stood by the trembling slave and murmured an incantation.

  He touched his palms together to close his gathered power, shut his eyes, and released. Tendrils of invisible force extended from his person. They emanated across the countryside, searching. Where they touched roads or back thoroughfares, even the most rudimentary trails used by farmers to cart produce from the fields, the magical sensors brightened. They turned and followed the byways. As invisible threads, they coursed even the smallest footpaths. Within minutes, Tapek stood at the center of an outflung array of magic strands. His probes became an extension of himself, an expanding net that was sensitised to detect the presence of movement. Like a spider in a web, he waited.

  A twitch at his nerves brought his attention to bear on a shaded lane where two servants loitered at love. The magician let that strand slip and turned his focus on others. Here passed a small band of grey warriors, hunting for an unguarded needra herd; hunger drove them into lands that normally were populated and defended. They were not the only such band; thieves had grown bold during the Empire-wide unrest. But Tapek stayed detached. These wretched folk at their lawlessness were no concern of his. He dismissed the grey warriors' presence, seeking another company; less predatory, perhaps, and better armed, but moving just as furtively. He identified two small honor guards belonging to minor nobles; these warriors were simply hurrying with their masters to shelter under the protection of stronger benefactors.

  His probes twined across wooded lands and fields left untended. He crossed an expanse of dried thyza paddies, the dead shoots stuck up through cracked earth like serried ranks of brown quills. Birds pecked and squabbled over the heads of shriveled grain.

  And yet the movements of scavengers were not all that disturbed this sector. Past the arid fields, under cover of a copse of ulo saplings, Tapek's snare sensed something else: a half-glimpsed flash of green armor, and the rapid tramp of feet. His lips twitched. Now, at last, he touched upon a larger force, all of one hundred strong. This was hers: his quarry.

  Tapek focused his mind upon the site, and power defined its image. A dark-lacquered litter with shatra-bird hangings moved rapidly down a back road. The bearers were picked for strength and speed, and around them, in a sun-caught blaze of green armor, marched Mara's honor company of warriors. They were fighting fit, and armored as much for battle as for ceremony. What set them apart from all other retinues was the presence of a mantled adviser who wore a soldier's helm, and who swung along briskly on a crutch. The rich fall of his robes could not quite hide the fact that he had lost his left leg.

  Keyoke, Tapek identified, his smile a flash of white teeth. No house in the Empire but Mara's kept a cripple in high office. The old man yet kept his pride, not letting his infirmity slow the pace. Yet his presence further indicated Mara's culpability, Tapek guessed. The venerable former Force Commander would not be set at risk in the field unless the Lady felt great need for reassurance. Quickly the magician concluded his surveillance. Another grey head was also in Mara's company: Incomo, a senior adviser whom the Lady had learned to value since her acquisition of his service from her'vanquished Minwanabi enemies.

  Incomo was never one to endorse outright innovation. Such was the allure of the Lady's charisma that even her onetime foes were moved to support her in conspiracy. Tapek felt a flicker of ire. That this mere woman thought that she could move outside the law, and even by implication lay claim to the rights reserved for the Assembly, was dangerous. Her actions made her anathema. The gods themselves must know outrage.

  Tapek gauged the distance between himself and the fleeing retinue. His closed eyes twitched with tension as he collapsed his net of power. The single tendril that connected him with Mara's location he kept. A sudden fey giddiness passed through him as he shifted the balance of his powers and touched them to that strand. He disappeared from his vantage point by the pasture silently, leaving the stupefied slave still gro
veling, and the needra bull to settle its discord unattended.

  The magician reappeared on a lane miles distant, under dappled shade, slightly to the rear of Mara's column.

  His arrival was accomplished without fanfare. Still, his presence might have been expected, so swiftly did the rear ranks of Acoma soldiers stop short and whirl in place to face him. Their swords were ready, if not yet drawn, as if he, a Black Robe, presented the menace of a common bandit.

  The moment passed when his dark cloth should have been recognised for what it represented: a magician's robe could never be mistaken for the rags worn by a masterless thief of the road. Despite this, Mara's warriors did not bow or ease their stance. The two advisers stood silent.

  Here was impudence! Tapek fumed. The issue could no longer be disputed. Irked that the Assembly should yet be wasting itself with council and talk, Tapek hissed an involuntary breath in anger. Mara's entourage showed disrespect of the first order, to face him as if he could be threatened by weapons of war!

  Their boldness must go no further, Tapek resolved.

  He assumed a fearful mien.

  Despite a curt order to hold from Keyoke, the servants and slaves who marched at the core of Mara's retinue scattered and fled through the ranks of her guard. The bearers who held the litter trembled visibly, but a woman's voice from behind the curtains stayed their panic. At some second, unseen signal, they started forward at a run, the litter swaying and rocking in time to their ungainly race.

  Thunderstruck with astonishment, Tapek stood rooted. Obstinance was one thing; but this! That Mara's servants should dare to display anything other than instant obeisance in his presence was unthinkable!

  Then the Strike Leader of Mara's honor guard shouted, 'Come no closer, Great One.'

  Tapek shivered with affront. No one who was not a magician had raised his voice against him since he was a boy with talent yet undiscovered. Such insolence shocked the mage to fury after years of unquestioned obedience. Ready to spit with revulsion, or lash the very air with wild power, he shouted, 'My words are as law, and your mistress has transgressed our edict! Stand away or die!'

  The Acoma officer might be trembling, but his words held nothing of compliance. 'Then we will perish defending our Lady and enter the halls of the Red God as honored Acoma warriors!' He snapped a signal to his men. As one body, the green-armored company fanned out, blocking the Black Robe's path.

  The escaping litter gained ground. Keyoke exchanged a word with the officer. Tapek recognised Sujanra, one of the two Acoma Senior Force Leaders. The officer gave Keyoke a curt nod. A crutch saluted, signaling decision. Then Keyoke spun on his good leg, and half hopped, half swung after his retreating mistress.

  Incensed by the inconceivable effrontery of this futile, armed resistance, to be faced by Tsurani with anything but abject servility, Tapek's anger manifested as pure power.

  He raised his hands. Energy crackled and gathered around his forearms. It poised above his palms, brightening into a corona too fierce for human vision.

  Mara's warriors might be dazzled blind, but they answered by drawing their swords. Tapek heard the hiss of blade leaving sheath even over the buzz of the arcane forces he gathered. His rage stopped thought. One with the surge of his magic, he knotted his killing fury into a concentrated ball. The magic coalesced within his hand to a rainbow play of colors that flashed and melded, heated to searing red.

  'See what your mistress's folly has brought you!' Tapek screamed as he hurled his bolt of power at the honor guard. The ball of searing light leaped out, expanding with a crackle that shook the earth. The warriors nearest to Tapek were overtaken, and violent, flaming death erupted among their ranks. Leaping like a thing alive, the spell-wrought flame sprang from man to man, and in an instant living flesh flared up as a torch. The fires brought agony without relief. Men screamed, though the intake of breath scorched their lungs, and sucked the spell into their bodies to ravage their inner tissues. No matter how brave and resolute, the stricken warriors crumpled to their knees, then writhed in mindless suffering on the ground. Green armor blackened and blistered. The torment was hideous, beyond mortal endurance; except that the watching magician regarded them and did endure, stone-hearted. His red hair blew and tangled in drifts of smoke, and his nostrils pinched at the acrid stench of scorched hair and hide.

  The spell was not recalled. Tapek let the minutes pass until the flames at last quenched, their fuel spent. No bone and sinew remained to be burned. Only skeletons were left; charred, smoking fingers clenched blackened weapons. Sparks still danced in the eye sockets of the skulls, as if life lingered yet inside, still feeling, still howling in silent torment. The mouths gaped, forever frozen into screams.

  Tapek relished his satisfaction. Before him stood only the inner core of warriors, the last rank left alive to guard the road before the vanishing litter; and beyond these, their higher officers, Force Leader Sujanra and the adviser Incomo All stood fast, confronting death as true soldiers of the Acoma; even the palsied old adviser.

  Tapek stepped forward, stiff with disbelief. Drained beyond anger or amazement, and light-headed from the potency of his magic, he struggled to muster his wits. 'What is this? Are you blind? Fools? You saw what became of your companions!' He gestured toward the ashes of what lately had been living men, and his voice rose to a shriek, magic-enhanced. 'Why are you not on your bellies, crying mercy?'

  None of Mara's surviving honor guard moved. Her senior officers kept a grim façade and said nothing.

  Tapek took another step ahead. The slowest of the fleeing slaves had fallen prone, overcome by the display of a Black Robe's unrestrained wrath. They lay in the ditches a dozen paces back from the roadside, weeping and shivering, their foreheads pressed to earth. Tapek ignored these as if they were faceless, of less import than winnowed grass underfoot. Wind-blown cinders stung his eyes as he crossed the seared ranks of the dead. Blistered bits of armor and finger bones crunched under his feet. Closer he came, and closer still; Mara's retinue held fast.

  Down the road, curtains flying awry, the green-lacquered litter bounced as its bearers raced with their burden. Keyoke had caught up to them, despite the encumbrance of his crutch.

  Tapek regarded their futile flight with contempt as he addressed the warriors before him. 'What does your loyalty matter in the end? Your mistress will never survive to escape.'

  The Lady's defenders refused speech. The plumes on Sujanra's helm twisted and quivered, yet that detail gave no satisfaction. The movement was no part of cowardice, but only the influence of the wind. The Force Leader's will was rock, his resolve unbending. Incomo stood like a priest in the holy ground of a temple, his face revealing an expression of profound acceptance.

  Tapek gazed upon each of these warriors who had witnessed his wrath, and still could not be made to fear. One thing remained that might hurt them, might yet shatter their front of solidarity and defiance.

  His anger burning again, Tapek gauged the distance between himself and the site where Mara's litter had retreated around a bend. He marked a lightning-torn tree. With a flexing of his will, his magic relocated him to that spot.

  As the Black Robe appeared, Keyoke whirled and stopped. Braced on his crutch, he assumed guard stance between the mage and his mistress's litter.

  'Tell your Lady's bearers to halt!' Tapek demanded.

  'Let my Lady command her slaves as she will.' Keyoke slipped his crutch from under his arm. He gripped it with both hands and twisted, releasing a hidden catch. The smoothed wood parted with the clean, clear hiss that signaled a blade being drawn from a scabbard concealed inside. His voice was not an old man's, but rang like that of a field general as he said, 'Neither will I stand aside, unless my Lady so orders.'

  Tapek was beyond astonishment. He glared, but saw no yielding. Keyoke's face was weathered leather, scribed with too many lines and too many years of hard living to alter its set and show weakness. His eyes might not be so clear of late, but they burned with the surety
of his self-worth. He had faced the worst a warrior could imagine, to survive and overcome the shame of living maimed. Death, his steady gaze seemed to say, held no secrets, but only final quiet rest.

  'No need, old man,' the magician snapped. He moved toward the thicket where the bearers had scurried, dragging Mara's litter to shelter.

  Keyoke moved with surprising speed. The magician found himself targeted by the lunge of a sword's point, wielded by a cripple.

  The speed of the attack confounded Tapek, and just barely, he dodged aside. 'You dare!' he shouted.

  For all that had gone before, that any man alive should attempt violence against him was beyond Tapek's imagination. Keyoke not only dared, he repeated the act. His sword whined down, snapping a rip in black cloth. Tapek hopped away, his movements less graceful than those of the one-legged swordsman as he barely escaped the deadly blow. The blade flicked, cut, and forced him back yet again. Harried almost off balance, Tapek could not summon concentration. To focus his will and access magic was impossible as he ducked and sidestepped and backed away from the old man's attack. 'Stop! Stop at once!' cried the magician. Unaccustomed to physical exertion, it was all he could do not to pant.

  Mockery tinged Keyoke's next feint. 'What, you cannot outrun even me?'

  Forced to teleport out of reach, Tapek reappeared, breathing hard. Tsurani enough to burn with shame for his retreat, and half choking in throttled rage, he drew himself up with as much majesty as he could muster. From a deep pit of black wrath, he summoned power. Magic gathered in him and made the air crackle with ozone. Blue energies discharged around him, as if he centered a small-scale lightning storm.

  Still Keyoke admitted no fear. As he leaned on the blade he had carried in his crutch, his normally impassive mien gave way to a thin-edged scorn. He observed, 'My mistress is right. Your kind are nothing but men, no wiser or nobler than other men.' Seeing his words sting the magician, who now stood trembling, he added, 'And fearful, childish men at that.'