Frakk glared at the lad. “And this is my apprentice, Mudge.”
The boy blushed.
“All right,” the elder Bastorran told him, “you can cut the formalities. Our time is short. What have you to show us?”
“With your permission, Clan High Chief.”
“Yes, yes, get on with it.”
The wizard beckoned to a group of burly helpers at one end of the courtyard. They stood by an unhitched wagon. At his signal there was a flurry of spitting on hands and rolling up of sleeves. Then they set to pushing the wagon in his direction. It trundled to a halt in front of the wizard and the paladins. Frakk’s helpers backed off.
“I’m about to demonstrate a radical development in both the potent art and ambulatory warfare,” the sorcerer announced. He looked to his dopey young assistant. “The bag, boy. The bag.”
Mudge snapped out of it. “Oh. Yes, master.”
He bent and undid the bag’s fastening, then strained to lift something out of it.
Ivak Bastorran sighed loudly.
The sorcerer moved to help his apprentice. There was a moment of muddle and an irritable slapping of the boy’s wrists. At last they removed a weighty cube, the colour of red ochre. It had runic symbols carved on all its sides. Tottering to the wagon with it, heaving and puffing, they manhandled it onto the tailboard. Then Frakk produced a wand and proceeded to tap it rhythmically against the cube. Next he circled the wagon, tapping each of the wheels in like fashion.
Ivak grunted. Devlor folded his arms.
Frakk cleared his throat and resumed his pitch. “No one before has thought to utilise the power of magic in quite this way. That cube –’ he pointed at it “– has been charged with magical energy, and I have developed a unique spell for dispensing it. Shall I proceed?”
“Do,” Ivak told him.
The sorcerer drew himself up to his full height, such as it was, mouthed an incantation and dramatically jabbed his wand at the wagon.
Nothing happened.
He waved the wand about a bit more, then shook it. The paladins looked on disdainfully.
“Er, just let me try that again,” Frakk said.
He went through the spell once more, ending with another thrust of the wand.
Everything stayed the same. The wagon remained a wagon.
Then they heard a creaking sound. Wood softly groaned and metal gave a tiny ping. The wagon shuddered.
Slowly, ever so slowly, it began to move. Gradually it gathered momentum, until it was moving at a leisurely walking pace.
Frakk whooped in triumph.
The wagon trundled across the courtyard, rattling and squeaking, until it neared a wall. A quick pass from the sorcerer’s wand stopped it.
Smiling proudly, he brandished the staff again, in a kind of summoning gesture. The wagon began rocking, then started to reverse. As before, it moved fairly slowly at first, the speed building the further it travelled.
When it went by Frakk and the other observers the wagon was travelling fast enough to give off a little rush of displaced air. They noticed its spinning wheels were suffused with a purplish glow that crackled about the spokes. As the wagon headed down the courtyard, bumping and juddering, it picked up even more speed. By the time it came within range of the wall at the other end of the courtyard, it was going about as fast as it would if horses had been attached.
Swelling with pride, looking just a touch smug, Frakk flourished his wand, commanding the wagon to stop.
It kept going.
He waved the wand again, his smile growing forced.
The wagon didn’t slow.
The wizard became frantic. Swishing the air with his staff, he jumped up and down and took to shouting.
With a loud crash, the wagon hurtled into the wall. Wood splintered, metal twisted. A wheel detached, bounced, spun. The sheen of purple radiance that enveloped the wreckage sputtered and went out.
Silence descended.
“He’s invented a horseless carriage,” Devlor said.
“A horseless carriage,” his uncle repeated.
They looked at each other. Then burst out laughing.
Laughter instantly spread across the courtyard. The other petitioners on their benches began to laugh, and the guards with them. Clansmen practising combat lowered blades and bows to join in. The men who pushed the wagon, armourers, blacksmiths, servants, everybody started to laugh.
The wizard, bewildered, started to laugh. He nudged his apprentice and he started to laugh, with an effort.
Ivak Bastorran, racked with laughter, eyes damp, turned to the sorcerer. “I should… have you… flogged… for wasting our time.”
The sorcerer stopped laughing.
“What a stupid idea,” Devlor agreed, gulping air and dabbing his eyes. “Who’s going to use something like that –’ he cocked a thumb at the demolished wagon “– when we’ve got horses?”
“It’s the most feeble-minded notion I’ve ever come across,” Ivak spluttered.
“Thank you, Frakk,” Devlor said, slapping the back of the wincing sorcerer, “you’ve brightened my day. Have you thought of selling it to the Diamond Isle as a novelty attraction?”
“Even better,” Ivak wheezed, “see if Melyobar wants to buy it!”
Frakk desperately tried to cling to the last shreds of his dignity amid the roars of mirth.
Elsewhere in Bhealfa that dawn the Prince’s court was roaming through a sparsely inhabited strip of coastland. The royal household, its retinue and uncountable camp followers were moving along a lengthy, golden beach.
Swarms of spy glamours hovered far above, keeping pace. They belonged to both friend and foe, and occasionally attempted to annihilate each other with negating bolts. But even from their height, the flying eyes could barely take in the procession in its entirety.
The palace itself, in the centre of the crawling mass, might have been a sizeable island. Accompanying residences, the manses and castles of courtiers, occupied less acreage but were still titanic. Bustling around and between these lumbering colossi was an army of horsemen, and vehicles of every conceivable kind. Such was the size of the company that its flanks splashed through waves on one side and bumped over scrubby sand dunes on the other. Nothing of the beach could be seen.
The royal palace had no foundations in the conventional sense, for obvious reasons. Yet it did have a subterranean level. This was achieved by the simple expedient of having no windows or other apertures on its lowest three or four storeys. Anyone transported to this area of the palace would see no difference to being genuinely underground. Though few would welcome the prospect.
Although he couldn’t cite an example from memory, Prince Melyobar had always felt the victim of treachery. Consequently he took many precautions to defend himself, and one manifestation of this wariness was his praetorian guard. They were a hand-picked elite, their loyalty subject to terrible oaths and hourly testing. He didn’t trust them, of course, because he trusted no one. But he relied on them a little more than most.
Up much earlier than was his usual practice, he was accompanied by two of these worthies as he moved through the palace’s lower reaches. They passed numerous other sentinels, and negotiated many secure doors. At last they came to a door defending a section only the Prince would enter. He dismissed his escort and watched them leave.
The door was substantial; layered steel and hardwood, thick as a mature tree trunk. It bore the moulded face of a lion.
“Let me in,” the Prince demanded.
“I require proof of identity,” the lion replied. “Place your hand in the receptacle.”
Melyobar slipped his hand into a wall slot. He felt a slight tingling sensation in his fingers.
“Welcome, your Majesty. Please enter.”
Had the Prince been an impostor he would have lost his hand, followed shortly by his life.
There was the sound of stout locks uncoupling. The door slowly swung open. As Melyobar stepped inside, glamoured lighting
came on, then the door closed behind him with a weighty thud and its locks re-engaged.
He was in the royal treasury. The chamber was the first of a series of spacious, interconnecting vaults, with arched openings leading from one to the next. The riches stored here had been estimated as a quarter of the realm’s wealth. But that wasn’t what interested him.
The first room he passed through was given over to coin. Untold sacks of currency were stacked like sandbags, floor to ceiling, with narrow paths between the rows. A profusion of loose, burnished coins had been scattered on a polished oak table. They all carried his profile, a flattering version of his younger self.
Next he came to a vault dedicated to silver. Piles of ingots in massive blocks, head-high. A profusion of statuary, chalices, picture frames, cutlery, objets d’art. The lustre of cold moon metal.
A stark contrast to the room that followed, where gold was stored. Warm yellow bars criss-crossed in heaps the size of chicken coops. Jewellery, helmets, breastplates and greaves, goblets and plate. Flaxen idols, precious to the sun.
The room after that held precious and semi-precious stones. Twinkling blues, reds and greens on racks and shelves. Pearls, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, amethyst, jade, beryl, jet. Necklaces, bracelets, brooches, daggers inlaid with jasper and agate.
In the adjoining chamber the lights had been dimmed, lest its treasure blind the unwary. Diamonds of all sizes, some as big as hen’s eggs, nestled on black velvet trays, and in settings, as crowns, coronets, tiaras and fiery chokers. Multifaceted jewels winking like a million stars.
Next he entered the room where rare, expensive glamours were kept. These came in a variety of shapes and sizes: phials, tablets, cones, cubes, rounded stones, pyramids and spiky wheels. Charms for love and death, elevation and calamity, revelation, concealment and a thousand other grand illusions. Frozen spells laid down like vintage wine – of which there was also a vast quantity in the adjacent cellar. Tiers of cobwebbed bottles, ranks of flasks, jeroboams and methuselahs. Beyond that, an apartment containing artworks: paintings, tapestries, statues, carvings and friezes.
Melyobar weaved through this hoard with little regard, except to run his finger now and again across a dusty surface. He lingered only once, in the penultimate chamber, a room filled with nothing save worthless bric-a-brac.
Here he found some resonance with the contents of an open, battered box. It held a ball, a hoop and stick, and a hand puppet.
Finally he came to the innermost apartment. It was quite unlike all the others. What it housed was something most precious to him, and which he feared nearly as much as Death himself.
He gathered his courage and entered.
There was a smell of sweet decay. Not putrescence, but an aroma of flesh gradually slipping into irreversible decline. The scent of over-ripe ambition and lost hope.
The room was uncluttered. Its spare furnishings consisted of a chair, a bureau and a four-poster bed. An almost completely transparent glamour bubble enclosed the bed. On it lay the body of his father.
King Narbetton looked the way a king ought to: majestic of mien, strong-featured, face lined with the wisdom gained from age and experience. He had the physique of a warrior, still apparent despite time’s ravages. He was dressed in finery, with a gold crown upon his brow. His orb and sceptre had been laid out on one side of the wide bed, his ornamental broadsword on the other.
The King had been in magical stasis for the best part of two decades. An endless parade of sorcerers had tried to break the spell. In recent times it seemed Melyobar had come to have second thoughts about this, and the succession of enchanters dried up.
Narbetton seemed to be asleep, though it was near impossible to detect his breathing. His hair, beard and nails had kept growing, which added a kind of leonine magnificence to his appearance.
The Prince crept into the bedchamber, like a child again. Dragging over the high-backed chair, he sat, steepled hands in his lap.
“How are you today, Father?” he asked, speaking in a near whisper as though fearful of angering his parent.
“Ah, good, good. I’m glad to hear it.”
He cocked an ear. “What was that, Father? Oh yes, all’s well with the realm. There’s nothing that need concern you about the governance.”
Melyobar listened again, intently. “No. As I said, everything’s – Hmm, yes. Of course, but –’
The Prince slumped back in his chair and minded his father. “Why? Well, I wanted your advice about something. You’re the only one who really – No. No, Father. I won’t let him take you, I promise.”
There was a further pause. “But that’s why I’m here. It’s to do with him. It is. If I can explain? Can I, Father? Can I? Thank you.”
Melyobar composed himself. “As I say, I need your counsel on this very subject. I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot lately, and – He can. He can, Father. I think you’ll find that he can. All right. Now, may I… ? Very well. My best efforts have been directed to finding a solution to the problem, as you know. I keep on the move to outpace and confuse him. I’ve surrounded myself with an iron wall of security. I send out hunting parties, though always without success, because I know I have to take the fight to him. But just lately I’ve come to realise that I can’t see for looking. Hmm? What do I mean?”
He thought about it, expelled a breath and said, “Imagine I’m looking for a particular kind of tree in a forest. What kind of tree? Oh, I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter. Father, please. Let’s just say there’s only one of this particular kind of tree, whatever it is, but I can’t find it because of all the other trees it’s mixed in with. Now, think how easy it would be if all those other trees died, and just the one I was looking for was left standing.”
There was a long pause. “Don’t you see? Father, you must. Look. I can’t find Death because he’s hidden amongst all those living people. Millions of them. If they weren’t there, he’d really stand out, wouldn’t he? After all, he’d be the only one left alive. So to speak. And me. And perhaps my personal guard to deal with him now he wouldn’t have anywhere to hide. Yes, Father, you too. Of course. Of course you too, Father. You know I meant you as well, I just forgot to say it, that’s all. I wouldn’t let him take you. I promise. Trust me. What was that?”
Melyobar nodded. “Yes, that’s right. And who knows? Perhaps he’ll be so pleased at having that many dead people slapped on his plate he’ll grant me a pardon. Yes, and you too, Father. I hadn’t forgotten.”
The Prince took in the King’s next comment. “Exactly. I knew you’d get to the nub of it. Well, I thought of ordering them all to kill themselves. A royal proclamation. But I regret to say that not all my subjects can be relied on to follow orders, and it only takes a few not co-operating to ruin things for everybody else. Subjects can be very selfish. I considered the possibility of setting up groups of assassins with orders to kill everyone. Then I’d order them to kill each other. But you can’t trust assassins. I wondered whether there was some kind of spell that could annihilate everybody, but I don’t think there is such a thing. I’ve contemplated the idea of poison, except I don’t know how I’d get them to take it. Tell me, Father, how do you kill off the entire population?”
Prince Melyobar listened intently to what the King had to say. “I knew your advice would be sage. It sounds no easy task, but needs must. I’ll begin work on it right away.” An abstracted look came to his face, and it darkened. “I wish it could be tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Freedom Day. Huh! What freedom have I, trying to avoid his clutches? They’ll be parading themselves like fools. Anarchy and uproar. Shielding him. What I’d give to cut down that forest.”
He smiled at his father’s motionless form. “Yes, I wish it could be then.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
By mid-morning Valdarr was warm and sunny. The few clouds were as pristine white as icebergs, navigating a perfectly blue sky.
On the balcony of Kinsel Rukanis’s mansion, Kutch had joined the singer, Tanalvah
and the children. The young sorcerer’s apprentice was showing off his growing skills as a spotter.
“Over there.” He pointed to three figures, a man and two women, strolling along an avenue. “He’s real, they’re not. And that bird, on the roof opposite. That’s a glamour, too.”
“Amazing,” Kinsel said. “There’s no way I could have told the difference.”
“Well, you have to take my word for it, of course.”
“Don’t worry, Kutch,” Tanalvah laughed, “we believe you!”
“What about that one?” Lirrin piped up, pointing at something that looked like an oversized gremlin prowling about on the balcony of an adjoining building. Teg watched wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
“Afraid not, dear,” Tanalvah told her. “Or rather, yes, it’s a glamour, but we can all see that. I mean, we know there are no such things as gremlins, don’t we? So we can guess that something unusual like that has to be magic. Kutch can see things that don’t look as though they’re magic.”
Lirrin and Teg listened intently, wonder on their plump, shining faces.
“I know next to nothing about the workings of magic,” Kinsel admitted. “Like most people I just take it for granted.”
“Me too,” Tanalvah agreed.
“So, how do you do it?” Kinsel asked. “More to the point, what do you do? If it’s not some dark secret, that is.”
“It’s not a secret. But explaining spotting isn’t easy, because a lot of it’s kind of… instinctive. My training’s to do with sharpening that instinct. I can tell you the theory of spotting, though.”
“I’d like to hear it. Let’s sit down.”
They retreated to the table. The children ran off for a game of their own.
“Don’t break anything, you two, and keep the noise down!” Tanalvah called after them.
“Yes, Auntie Tanalvah!” they chorused, dashing into the house and slamming doors.
“I don’t think they find grown-up talk very interesting,” she explained, smiling.
They poured themselves tumblers of thick, sweet fruit juice.
“So, how does it work, Kutch?” Kinsel repeated.
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