by Glen Cook
The old man reddened. He cursed, and stalked out of the room.
Imp-Child giggled, winked at Haroun, followed.
Haroun stared at the bronze mirror, watching Nassef follow an endless trail. He wanted to go down, collect Bragi and move on. Instead, he fell asleep.
The old man returned that night. “Come with me,” he said. Puzzled, Haroun followed him to the tower’s parapet, which was spectral in the moonlight. He watched distant manshapes doggedly pursue a circular trail.
A milky globe rested atop a tripod standing at the parapet’s center. It glowed softly. “Look into this,” the old man said.
Haroun looked. And saw the past. He watched his father, brother, uncle and King Aboud die brave deaths. Aboud fought like the lion he had been as a young man. He watched his mother and sisters die. He watched the confrontation between Ahmed and Nassef. He could not turn away, though each second was an eternity of torture. Something compelled him to study Nassef in action.
The scene changed. He recognized the desert near the ruins of Ilkazar. A horde of horsemen milled nearby.
“Those are Royalists,” the old man said. “They began gathering when news spread from Al Rhemish.” Flick. A change of time. “Earlier today. These are El Murid’s men, commanded by Karim and el-Kader, who on their own initiative followed Nassef and the Disciple.”
The enemy spied the Royalist host. They charged. The Royalists scattered like chaff before the wind. In minutes there remained no foundation upon which the Royalist cause could be rebuilt. Haroun sighed. The arrangements his father and Megelin had made, for camps beyond the border, would have to serve to rally the cause.
Haroun divined a bleak future. Exile. Warfare. The constant threat of the Harish kill dagger.
The old man crooned over the globe and showed him what it might be like. Endless flight and fear. Frequent despair. He shuddered at the prospects.
Then the old man said, “But that need not be.” Flick, flick, flick. “Here. Here. Here. We can reach back. A moment of blindness. A strayed swordstroke. A captain’s horse stumbling at an inopportune moment. Little things can shift the course of history.”
“You can do that?”
“If you wish.” The battle before the ruins reappeared. “Here. An order misinterpreted.”
“That’s too easy,” Haroun muttered, though he was not sure why. “But tempting.” Was it something Megelin had taught him? “What’s the price?” There would be a price. Nothing was free. The more desirable it became, the crueler the cost. It would be more bitter than the price he had paid already.
A childhood memory surfaced. At four he had broken a glass mirror belonging to his mother. His father had had it imported from Hellin Daimiel. He had spent a fortune acquiring it. Haroun’s whispered plea to the unseen, then, had been, “Please, make it didn’t happen.”
In a way, that was what magic was all about. Putting off payments by taking the apparently free route, the characterless route, the easy way. But there were traps and ambushes along that track, cunningly hidden and all unpleasant.
Ahmed had tried the easy way. Ahmed was dead and dishonored. Generations would curse his name.
The old man did not answer his question. Haroun stared him in the eye. “No. The past is done and dead. Let it lie.” But it hurt to say that.
The old man smiled. Haroun thought the smile guileful, as though the man had gotten the answer he wanted.
“Nor will I change the present,” Haroun said. “I’ll make my own future, for good or ill.”
“Excellent. Then on to the tests.”
“Tests?”
“Of course. I told you the Candidate must be tested. For courage, for wisdom, for... You’ll understand in time. My father was determined that there be no more kings like the Golmune Emperors. Come with me.”
Haroun wondered what the old man’s real stake was. His story became increasingly unconvincing. He seemed, deliberately, to be fostering the fragile, probably futile dream of a Royalist return. And certainly was pushing the fantasy of a resurrected Empire. That insanity could be left to El Murid.
Several levels down, Imp-Child lighted candles and stoked up a fire. The old man settled himself on a worn chalcedony throne. Haroun faced him across a dusty table. Atop the table lay three purple pillows. On those rested a bronze sword, a robe of ermine and, to the eye, nothing. But something heavy had crushed the third pillow deeply. The sword was green with verdigris. The ermine had been the home of generations of moths.
“We begin,” the old man said. “Take up the sword.”
Puzzled, Haroun grasped the worn hilt.
“This is the sword Ashkerion, forged by Fallentin the Smith, which bought the victory celebrated at Sebil el Selib. The man who bears this blade needs fear no enemy. It defends against all attack. It’s always victorious.”
Though Haroun had heard of the sword Ashkerion, there was no proof it had existed. He recalled that Fallentin was said to have cast the blade into the sea after securing the throne. He had feared it, for it had developed a will of its own. He thought it might deliver itself into the hands of an enemy.
Haroun let go. “No. Ashkerion had a treacherous reputation. And a man could grow too dependent on a weapon like that. He could grow too arrogant in his power.” He envisioned Megelin nodding. Megelin would say something like that.
“Pretty speech,” Imp-Child grumbled.
The old man was startled. “You reject the sword? But you have to take it.”
“No.”
“Take the robe, then. Take up the robe and the authority it represents.”
Haroun remained unconvinced that this man had waited four hundred years to crown a new emperor. He suspected motives unrelated to those proclaimed. He could not fathom what they might be, though.
Would it hurt to humor the fellow? That might lead him nearer the truth.
He slung the ratty ermine across his shoulders.
Imp-Child squealed delightedly. “It didn’t turn to dust! He is the One.”
The old man was less exuberant. “The Crown, then,” he said. “The Invisible Crown that will fit none but the One. The Crown so heavy only a man determined to fulfill its obligations can lift it. Take it up, Haroun.”
Haroun lingered over the third pillow, intimidated by the old man’s statement. Finally, he reacted. His fingers touched something his eyes denied. He tried lifting it. It yielded only slightly, slipping sideways. Its weight was astonishing.
“You have reservations,” the old man said. “The Crown can tell if you’re not wholly committed to people and empire.”
“No,” Haroun said. “I don’t trust you.”
Which was true. But the old man was right, too. Haroun faced a tough decision. Was he prepared to pay the dreadful price demanded of a king in exile? He had been too busy staying alive to face that question.
“A king must be responsible,” the old man said. “He is his people and kingdom. Kings are made to put the burden upon.”
Not the best argument to sway a wavering youth, surely.
Haroun surrendered. Not to that old man’s dream, but to his own. To a dream his father and Megelin Radetic had shaped.
He acknowledged himself King in Hammad al Nakir.
It meant guerrilla camps, grim deeds and murder done to little apparent purpose, but always with a hope that he would be moving toward peace, unity and restoration.
The vision both depressed and excited him.
He lifted the crown again. This time it rose as lightly as a wisp of cotton.
“It fits!” Imp-Child squealed, and danced a wild jig.
Haroun snugged the crown upon his head. It bore down so hard he staggered. It suddenly became as light as a silver circlet, then as tenuous as a forgotten obligation.
He had a feeling it would permit no forgetting. He had sold his freedom for a dream.
The old man said, “All men who have an interest in the affairs of Hammad al Nakir, be they friend or foe, now know that a
King has been crowned for Ilkazar.”
“The King Without a Throne,” Imp-Child intoned. “The Lord in Shadow.”
Haroun felt the knowledge of himself leak into a hundred minds. He felt the rage swell in El Murid and his captains, felt the elation blossom in Royalist commanders riding hard with despair running at their stirrups. Nowhere did he sense a rejection of his right.
The moment faded. The contact died.
“You refused Ashkerion,” the old man said. “Beware, then. Turn your back on no man. Choose your successor wisely, and before you yourself depart this pale. Otherwise the Crown will go down with you, and be forgotten again. And I will be recalled from the darkness, to await another Candidate.”
Haroun glanced at the old bronze sword. He reached — then drew back. As if sensing final rejection, the blade disappeared. Eyes wide, Haroun turned to the old man.
The alleged son of Ethrian the Wise had vanished too. Only dusty bones sat on the chalcedony throne.
Imp-Child considered him gravely. “Thank you. For the old man’s freedom. For mine. Take your people away now. Your pursuers won’t see you go.”
There was a flash and a pop. When Haroun’s senses cleared he found himself alone with bones and dust and three empty pillows.
A hint of dawn rosed the sills of the windows. For a moment he wondered if his visit hadn’t been a hallucination.
But no. It had been real. He had healed. He wore a ragged ermine mantle, which he removed. And he felt driven to reclaim the usurped throne he’d never seen.
It was a need he would do anything to fulfill.
He went down dusty stairs and out a doorway which disappeared behind him. Looking north, he saw the dawn-tinted, snow-capped peaks of the Kapenrung Mountains. One day. Maybe two. He surveyed his companions. Bragi, the boys and all the animals were in a deep sleep beside a pool of water. They all looked healthier than when last he had seen them.
On a distant ridgeline a band of horsemen paused to study the land ahead, then stumbled forward along a trail which had no end.
“Wake up, Bragi. Time to get moving.”
The old man stepped from behind the chalcedony throne. He carried a huge cornucopia. He stuffed its bell with pillows, bones and such. He muttered to himself while he worked.
“The stage is set. The struggle will last a generation.”
He whipped around the throne, dragged a squawking Imp-Child from hiding. “Crafty little wretch. Thought I’d forget you, eh?” He booted the imp into the horn’s bell. It tried to scramble out. He grunted as he strained to overcome it. “In, damn it! In!” The cherub squealed piteously and popped out of sight.
The old man leaned against the windowsill and watched the fugitives straggle away. He chuckled malevolently. “Now for Nassef,” he said, and crooked a finger at the riders in the hills.
“What happened?” Bragi asked. “It seemed like I dreamed for days.”
“I’m not sure,” Haroun replied. He told what he could recall. “But I don’t know if it was real. I already feel tired again.”
They paused atop a ridgeline and looked back. There was no sign of a watchtower.
Haroun shrugged. “Real or not, we have to go on.” He seemed to feel a heavy weight atop his head. He glared at the mountains before them, started forward, grimly determined.
Here Ends Book 1 of the Dread Empire
