by David Duncan
And why Quo?
Why Quo?
He reached the top and was surprised to see that the museum door was open, the great bar leaning against the wall. A slim, red-haired swordsman was wandering along beside the tables, studying the wall of swords. He turned at the end and came back on the other side, looking now at the litter on the tables themselves. Wallie stood just inside the room, waiting with folded arms.
"Nothing moved!" Nnanji said, beaming. "Just as we left it, on Merchants' Day, when you gave me my sword. We forgot to have the bar put back, brother! I forgot!" He snickered. "But no one's taken a thing. That's very good!"
Wallie waited.
"Right!" Nnanji folded his arms also. "Now, let's make sure I understand. We all swear to the new sutra. You put two hundred men or so into the seven cities as garrisons. You make everyone swear to spread the word about sorcerers being nice boys. Then you disband the tryst. Do I have it right?"
Wallie nodded.
Nnanji swung around and began to pace. "And the sorcerers will destroy their fire weapons-but we have to take that on trust, don't we?"
He took down a sword and hefted it. "That is tricky, isn't it? The sorcerers won't be outnumbered any more. They can hold a massacre any time. Splash? Two hundred splashes."
Wallie found his voice. "But we went over all that this morning. We must have a treaty; and it's for the good of the sorcerers, too. It's a risk, yes, but we must trust them, just as they must trust us."
Still studying the sword, Nnanji said quietly, "The sorcerers are not the problem."
Wallie gaped. Then it was obvious. Sooner or later some idiot swordsman would pick a fight with a sorcerer-in a bar, over a girl, or just to show how tough he was. The wizard would demand justice from the reeve, and... and what?
"Oh, hell!" Wallie said. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"
He leaned against a table and put his hands over his face. He had been judging the swordsmen by their sutras and the Sevenths of his council, who were exceptional. He had overlooked Hardduju and Tarru, the rapists of Yok, the drunks at Wo, the fossil at Tau, even the initial chaos in Casr-all the bad swordsmen he had met and should have remembered. Swordsmen swore their superhuman oaths, and perhaps most of them tried their best, but in reality they were a very mixed bag-often corrupted by power, unsupervised, laws unto themselves-better than anarchy, but far from perfect. It would take near-perfection to make his plan work. Nnanji had always understood the swordsmen better than he, and if Nnanji said it would not work, then it would not. Wallie had promised Rotanxi the World. He could not even deliver the seven cities.
Failure as a bottomless pit! Wishful thinking-he had been so reluctant to fight a war that he had invented an impossible peace. And now he had sworn an oath and thrown away the tryst.
Disaster!
"But why now?" he wailed, looking up. "Why not say so in the council?"
Nnanji replaced the sword and shrugged. "Swordsmen don't say such things about their own craft. We all know it, but we don't talk about it." He continued his wanderings.
"But Rotanxi swore-"
"Ah, yes! But he didn't bind his friends, did he? They know about the fourth oath, so I go into the first convenient dungeon. He'll start with my toenails, I expect, as I suggested that approach to him."
"What! You're joking!"
"True!" Nnanji admitted. "But we should remove the temptation!"
Wallie shivered. "You're right! I should have thought of that. So you're planning to swear that the tryst will not be disbanded, not until the garrisons are in place?"
Nnanji was back in front of him.
"Why then?" he said.
"Huh?"
Nnanji grinned. "It's funny; you've got an odd way of saying things, sometimes, Shonsu. I understand you now, but... Rotanxi said, 'Admit it-the tryst must be disbanded.' Remember? And you said, 'I admit nothing.' What he thought you promised was that you-the liege lord-would make the cities safe for sorcerers. That the tryst would keep order, as it does in Casr. He was willing to accept that, and when I repeated your words to the Sevenths, that was what they understood, too." He smirked. "Perhaps I changed the emphasis a little, but I used the same words. Then you didn't put it in your oath; we must keep the tryst in being!"
Relief washed over Wallie like a spring thaw.
"Of course!" he said. "That would work! We keep the garrisons sworn by the third oath!"
Nnanji nodded and grinned again. "And we hold a group of good swordsmen here in Casr. If there is any nonsense in any of the cities, we go and... educate them!"
"And it wouldn't cost much more, just a few extra men!" Now Wallie could smile. "You had me scared, Nnanji! But I think that will work." He had wondered what he would do after the tryst was disbanded. Now he had job security.
Then his mood went black again.
"But that only solves the problem of the seven cities. I promised the World."
"Ah!" Nnanji set off on his rambling once more. "The god's riddle-return the sword. That's why you have to go to Quo, brother, where Chioxin lived."
"Why? What's special about Quo?"
"Think strategy!" Nnanji said from the middle of the room. "Nine ninety-three, ten seventy. The loop is closed, almost. You can't go upstream from Ov or down from Aus, right? Not easily. Quo is our front door, our door to the World. Not only a permanent tryst, Shonsu, but a universal tryst!" His voice rose with excitement. "Do you see now? We send the Sevenths out from Quo, to every city on the River. They will swear the garrisons to the tryst! By force, if necessary."
Wallie roared with laughter. "Steady there, laddie!" he said. "We can't make every swordsman in the World into our vassal!"
Nnanji was not laughing.
"We have to! It's the only way to make the World safe for sorcerers-which was what you just swore that we would do, oath brother! And it will safeguard the garrisons-we'll have a huge tryst to call on if the sorcerers play false. Even Vul would be no problem then."
If you must dream, dream big! Liege lords of all swordsmen?
Nnanji's eyes gleamed. "More important, at the same time we'll clean up the whole craft-dispose of the crooks and the bullies and the sadists. Weed out the bad swordsmen and leave the good. Then every city and town can have a decent, honest, honorable garrison!"
Here was the juvenile reformer, shining with enthusiasm, the young idealist set to remake the World. That was why he had seemed so pleased!
"Tell me why it won't work!" Nnanji said, pacing restlessly, excited by his vision. His boots tapped and the boards squeaked.
There was a ship waiting. This would have to be quick. "Money!"
"Money?" Nnanji echoed scornfully. "The swordsmen ate before-they can eat in future. We'll find a way."
"Nnanji!" Wallie spoke very gently, as if talking to a child. "Not all swordsmen will want to be your vassal. What do your henchmen do if a man refuses to swear?"
"Blood needs be shed... but the honorable ones will swear quite happily."
"Courage is the highest honor..."
"Only in a good cause!"
This was more than idealism. This was fanaticism! Wallie felt the beginnings of fear.
"And what if Boariyi, say, runs into a better man? What if it's your man who gets killed, Nnanji?"
Nnanji was by the door, inspecting a jumble of standards stacked against the wall. He pulled one out and coughed in the dust. Then be grinned at Wallie. "I thought that bit would bother you! You send me. I'm the greatest swordsman in the World-except you. Maybe you? But I'll look after that job for you, brother!"
So this was the destiny he had seen on the ship: Nnanji the Avenger, terror of the ungodly. No wonder he had looked so pleased! Katanji was being led to great wealth-was this Nnanji's reward? Chief Enforcer for the Goddess... he would like nothing better.
Wallie shivered. He had created a monster.
"What about geography?" he asked, as calmly as he could. "What happens if you try to go to Hither and the Goddess sends you to Yon?"
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"She will support us!" Nnanji said, surprised. "Surely you see how the gods have been helping me? I got miracles, too!"
Megalomania!
Nnanji the messiah-he would set up a military dictatorship. Like Caesar. Like Cromwell. It could lead only to tyranny.
Wallie was sweating, wondering if he could bring himself to do whatever would be needed to stop this. "And the free swords?"
But Nnanji had worked out all the answers. "The same with them. If necessary we'll ride them down with your cavalry. They can keep their jobs, but we'll assign each group an area, and regional headquarters over them, eventually. Just like the cities-any complaints come back here, to me... us, I mean."
It was not only megalomania. Impossible courage, no scruples-Nnanji was a psychopath, and that should have been obvious from the beginning. He liked to play with babies, and he had wept at Gi. He was a fond husband and brother... but he was also a truly remorseless killer. He had enjoyed killing pirates and sorcerers. Wallie had thought that Nnanji had mellowed, from the debaucher of the barracks to the troubadour who had courted Thana so patiently. Not so!
"What about the council?" he asked, playing for time to think.
"They love the idea! Swordplay and honor? Better than building catapults, brother!" He thumped the flagstaff on the floor enthusiastically and was showered by dust again.
The tryst had carried him shoulder high.
"There will be resistance!" Wallie warned. "Refugee swordsmen setting up countertrysts."
"If it comes to battles, we shall have the numbers-and soon all the best men, too."
There must be a flaw! Now Wallie started to pace, groping for some logical way to end this madness peacefully, to convince Nnanji before Nnanji convinced him. "Thousands of swordsmen-their performances and histories and reliability-hundreds of cities and garrisons. How do you keep track of it all?"
Nnanji just laughed.
"Communications, then? After a few weeks the distances will become impossible."
Nnanji spread the flag to look at the faded emblems. "Fast boats, horse posts, and pigeons! The sorcerers will support the tryst because it protects them. I saw what Rotanxi was doing with that feather, remember!"
He was right again. A permanent and universal tryst must seem a mortal threat to the sorcerers. Vul itself would be in jeopardy. Wallie had convinced Rotanxi with an argument he had not even known he was presenting-small wonder that the old man had grabbed at the chance of the treaty! The sorcerers could provide communications and record keeping. They would seek to make themselves indispensable, and in so doing, they would perpetuate the dictatorship.
Wallie had proposed peace between the swordsmen and the sorcerers. He had not seen that the gods might have been keeping them apart for very good reasons.
But it was possible.
Wallie thought: It would work. I will have to do it, or Nnanji will try, and I may not have the power to stop him anymore. Nnanji is an illiterate barbarian, who knows nothing but killing. I am an educated and a peace-loving man, I know the dangers and could avoid them.... Is this my reward, omnipotence? I can be a benevolent despot, Emperor of the World, with a government and a palace...
His head swam with the vision. He could imagine the court, the honor guards of kilted swordsmen, the courtiers standing on both sides of the great aisle, and the petitioners creeping forward, bowing to the throne, to the Son of Heaven sitting there, holding the sword of the Goddess as symbol of his authority...
It could be done! There was nothing in the World to stop him. Nnanji would happily be chief of the army and Shonsu could be emperor.
And on the other throne, at his side...
The vision was so clear that he could almost turn his head and see her...
Who?
Nnanji leaned on the pole and waited, smiling.
And waited...
And waited...
Wallie looked up sadly. "The last thing the god told me," he said, "was that the guard on my sword hilt was a griffon, and that the griffon meant Power wisely used. He said that if I remembered that, I would not fail. It was a warning, Nnanji! He foresaw this temptation! The Goddess has given me power. I do not think that using power to gain more power is wise."
"Well, I do! In a good cause."
"Then I should have the greater problem of using the greater power wisely. An hour ago I threatened to throw Doa in the dungeons if she made fun of me-I'm not good enough, Nnanji."
Nnanji frowned. "Then you must step aside and let me do it."
The prophecy: It is your kingdom that I covet.
Wallie straightened up. Argument was always useless against fanaticism, and there were no words for despot or tyranny or dictatorship anyway.
"No," he said. "The tryst was called against the sorcerers. You are planning to turn it against the swordsmen! You don't know what it will lead to, Nnanji. I won't do it!"
"The tryst was called to restore the honor of the craft. The sorcerers are not important! I told you!"
"No!" Wallie insisted. "Do you remember the first lesson I ever gave you? We sat together on a wall in the temple grounds, in the shade of a tree. I told you men-power corrupts!"
"Not me!"
I am more worthy.
Stalemate.
Nnanji smiled hopefully. "You once said you would like to be reeve of Tau, didn't you? I will give it to you! And I will keep the tryst away, because I know you will be honorable."
Tyranny-already he was giving away cities? Wallie shook his head in silence.
Now Nnanji was becoming exasperated. "We agreed that the tryst can only have one leader. I have always deferred to you have I not? Till this. Must we have the combat for leadership, round three, brother? But let's use foils and swear to abide by that."
An hour ago Wallie would have jumped at that offer.
They stared at each other, eyes level-black eyes and pale brown eyes and neither would yield.
It was Wallie who turned away. He stalked slowly down the long room, wrestling with the problem. How to stop this? If he could not, then no one could. He could no longer trust his sword against Nnanji. Could he bring himself to commit murder? Throw his knife, say?
He had reached the broken fragment of the Chioxin fifth, another desolate memorial to human stupidity. He stared at it bleakly. Murder?
"No!" he said loudly. "I am leader. You are going to Vul. I shall go down there and swear to disband the tryst as soon as the garrisons are in place. If they provoke a massacre later, it will be their own fault."
Nnanji slammed the door with a noise like thunder and dropped the flagpole into the brackets across it. Then he went pounding down the stairs. He was almost at the bottom before he heard the door exploding, seven floors above him.
* * *
"Jja?" Lord Honakura called in his cracked old voice.
Jja hurried over to him.
"Bring me another cake, would you, my dear?"
She slipped carefully through the munching, sipping guests to the nearest table and managed to capture a plate of cakes without jostling anyone. Thana was there.
"Whatever can they be doing?" Jja whispered.
"No idea!" Thana said with her mouth full. "Not fighting, I shouldn't think. Not unless Shonsu's gone crazy."
Jja did not like the expression on Thana's face. She went back to Lord Honakura and knelt by his chair. He thanked her and selected the creamiest cake on the dish.
"Stay here!" he commanded when she was about to rise. "Have one yourself!"
Smiling, she obeyed. She was happy to remain; she felt safe beside him. The horrid minstrel woman had been eyeing her ever since Wallie left.
The sorcerer's voice cut suddenly through the uneasy chatter. "Your divided leadership perplexes me. What do you do if they disagree?"
Jja watched as the swordsmen glanced at one another. Somehow they selected Lord Tivanixi to carry the burden.
"We don't know, Lord Rotanxi. There are no precedents. In fact, I have never hea
rd of the fourth oath ever being sworn before. I don't know why the Goddess made that sutra."
"Perhaps just for this occasion?" Lord Honakura mumbled, wiping cream from his chin. Probably no one but Jja heard.
"Why should a tryst need two leaders anyway?" one of the other lords asked.
"It has three, I think," Honakura remarked quietly, and now he was certainly speaking to Jja.
"Three, my lord?"
The little bald head nodded. "Shonsu, Nnanji-and Wallie-smith. Would you not say so?"
Jja nodded, surprised. Yet it was not quite true. Wallie had been missing since the day she had been stripped by the two Seconds, here in the lodge. That had been Shonsu who had lost his temper and sold the swordsmen, Shonsu who had struck her. When he returned to Sapphire the next day, he had still been Shonsu. He had been Shonsu on the ship this morning when he almost drew against the captain. She had not seen Wallie until later today, when he had rescued her from the minstrel woman. Wallie had been there then. Her heart had told her.
She thought it had been Wallie swearing that oath before the priests, but she suspected that it had been Shonsu again who had gone off with Lord Nnanji.
There was shouting in the anteroom. The door flew open and men scattered as Nnanji burst in, red-faced and waving his sword. He skidded wildly on the silk rug, recovered his balance, and came to a panting halt. Jja's heart sank. Where was her master? Nnanji peered around until he located little Lord Kadywinsi, then stretched out his blade in the oath position, facing the priest.
Without preamble he began: "I, Nnanji, swordsman of the seventh-"
Honakura threw a cake at him.
"Young man," he snapped from his chair, "there are certain rituals that must be observed for oaths. If you wish my holy friends to be witnesses, then the least you could do is to ask their consent."
Nnanji spluttered and asked if they would witness his oath.
"I suppose we could manage that," Honakura said. "What do you think, Lord Kadywinsi?"
The priests had to be lined up. Lord Honakura asked Jja to help him rise, then went to join in, telling Lord Kadywinsi that he would like to do this one. He went to the wrong place. Lord Nnanji was twitching with impatience and very red, almost jumping from one foot to the other. The priest of the Fifth tried to help, but only muddled everyone worse than before. In spite of her worry, Jja almost smiled at that.
