by Dave Duncan
Raspnex chortled, a noise of ice floes in a polar storm. “Not much, you’re not! You and your kingdom. Your wife and children. I bet the little turd has dreamed of you every night for twenty years, your Majesty!”
“Why did none of you warn me?” Rap said angrily.
“Because we thought you knew! Because we thought you were laying low — and because we thought you could handle the matter when you got around to it!”
“You mean you were all relying on me? Waiting on me to do something? Fools!” Rap had always assumed that the Four knew how he had lost his paramount power years ago. Probably such an absurdity had never occurred to them, and they had been frightened to spy on a demigod. Fortunately Zinixo must have made the same error.
“That’s obvious now, but we didn’t know that, did we?” the dwarf snarled.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t come after me already.”
“He didn’t know, either! But it won’t be long now. And he couldn’t try to settle with you earlier without alerting the wardens.” The warlock’s sneer was almost an offer of sympathy by dwarvish standards.
Rap thought of the battles in which he had defeated Zinixo — the brutal one-on-one struggle when the dwarf had attacked him in the Rotunda, and then the greater battle when Rap had single-handedly stormed the Red Palace, an avenging demigod blasting aside guards and defenses in fiery cataclysms, rending walls in pursuit of his fleeing prey. Zinixo would have forgotten none of that, especially his own screams for mercy at the end.
He thought also of Krasnegar, and Inos, and the children, hopelessly vulnerable. Gods!
“Suppose he does seize the throne,” Sagorn asked hoarsely, “the Imperial throne, I mean, not Krasnegar — either in his own name or through a puppet — then what?”
“He will wipe out any threat, any threat at all. Any hint of disloyalty, any loose talk.” Raspnex threw contempt at the old jotunn, but Sagorn had already analyzed the logic to its absurd conclusions.
“But it will be his Impire then, won’t it? So any threat to the Impire will be a threat to the Living God? The caliph, for example.”
Surprised, the dwarf nodded. “Exactly. The caliph is a threat to the Impire, so the caliph will have to go. The goblins are about ready to launch their big attack — Zinixo will smash them. Of course he’ll go after Lith’rian and the elves first.”
Sagorn snapped his teeth shut with a click. “He will rule the world,” he muttered.
“In a year or two, yes.”
“Is there nothing we can do to prevent this obscenity?” Count Ionfeu said. Old and frail he might be, but generations of imperial pride showed on his weathered features. Thousands of men like him had built the Impire, and he would sooner die than let it all fell into the hands of a dwarf.
Silence fell.
Was there nothing to be done?
“Surely he can’t have cornered every word of power in Pandemia?” Rap asked Raspnex privately.
“Near enough. He has people out hunting down every sorcerer — Evil! — every adept and genius, even. If you go looking for allies, you can’t expect to collect them faster than his Covin can.”
There was the awful truth, then! “Faerie’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s where I made my great mistake?”
Raspnex’s shadow image bared its teeth. “That’s it!”
The mundanes were all waiting for an answer to the count’s question. Was there an answer?
Rap said, “There might be. It’s an Evilish long shot, but we could try, if Zinixo hasn’t beaten us to it.”
“Dross!” the dwarf snarled, disbelieving.
“There’s a lot of magic lying around in the Nogids!”
Raspnex gasped aloud. “You’ll get yourself eaten if you try that!”
“I’d rather have my flesh eaten than my mind, I think,” Rap said. “And it was all my fault.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Why was it?” the impress asked. All through the discussions, she had been sitting as still as a statue, holding her sleeping child. Why was her face so familiar? “What did you do, your Majesty?”
“I cut off the supply of magic. I can’t tell you all the details now, but I went back to Faerie —” A stab of pain reminded him that sorcery did not like to be discussed. “Never mind. I did it, and it’s done.” Each word of power represented a dead fairy, but almost no one except the wardens had ever known that simple fact. It was the ultimate secret behind the workings of sorcery, and the Protocol.
Faerie… Raspnex projected a whiff of nostalgia and a fleeting image of the riotous party in Milflor when Zinixo’s votaries had celebrated their release. They hadn’t noticed Rap arrive on the island, or what he was up to — not that they could have stopped him, anyway. By the time he had joined in the festivities, the fairies had vanished, from jail and jungle both. He had stamped out forever that ghastly farming of people, or so he hoped.
“And you can’t undo it now, can you?” the dwarf said angrily. “Your stupid, blundering good intentions! Where did you put the fairies?”
“I can’t even tell you. And no, I can’t ever undo it. I used every scrap of power I possessed.” Power he possessed no longer! “It’s done now. Forever. Unless the Gods take pity on us.”
He turned away from all the shocked faces. Good intentions? Only now did he see that the fairies’ suffering throughout the ages had at least helped to stabilize life for everyone else, by buttressing the Protocol. The arrangement had been grossly unfair, but it had held some good as well as much evil. By ending it, he had upset the balance of the world.
The one time he had tried to be a God, and he had blundered!
“I don’t understand!” Acopulo bleated.
“He cut off the supply of magic!” Raspnex growled. “The Protocol was set up to prevent exactly this sort of happening! The supply of magic was the prerogative of the warlock of the west. If any one sorcerer ever tried to build a sorcerous army and make himself paramount, West could create an opposing army! As a last resort. That’s why it’s never been done before, although Ulien’ came close in the War of the Five Warlocks.” He scowled, as if in pain.
Sagorn made a choking noise. “A safety net!”
“And your faunish friend cut it down!”
Ulien’? Again Rap felt a nudge of premonition.
Zinixo was the disaster at the end of the third millennium, but there had been trouble at the end of the first and the second, also, and it had been overcome both times. A thousand years since Thume had become the Accursed Land, since the whole race of pixies had vanished, and now…
“The imperor met a pixie!” he told Raspnex excitedly. “Ulien’, you said? War of Five Warlocks? Thume! There’s another hope, then! The War of the Five Warlocks? Maybe there is an answer — in Thume!”
“You’re crazy!” Raspnex mumbled, staring.
“Maybe! But craziness is all we’ve got left, isn’t it?”
The door downstairs opened briefly, and young Grimrix shot through it like a rabbit. Even before it had slammed shut again, he had translated himself back upstairs. He was flushed, and panting, and so excited that he shouted aloud. Rap and Raspnex both stiffened defensively, but he did not notice — and he did not seem to have been warped from his loyalty.
“They’re here, sir! Hussars, all around the house. All three streets.” Images of several hundred soldiers and their mounts…
“Any occults?” Raspnex demanded.
“Didn’t stay around to look, but if you’ll let me go down there again and thump ass, I can find out!” He was twitching with battle lust. Drums and trumpets…
“Can’t we leave the same way as Master Jalon did?” Signifer Ylo inquired in a shaky voice.
“Quite impossible!” Sagorn snapped, and Rap resisted a desire to laugh.
“You seem very certain of that,” Hardgraa growled.
This was no time to start explaining the workings of a sequential spell. “He’s right, though!” Rap said. “And we’d leave
tracks in this snow, wouldn’t we? Raspnex, got any ideas?”
“I can try. I’ll try to move us all to my palace.”
“But the house is shielded.”
The warlock leered. “It won’t be in a minute. Grimmy, can you lift this shield by yourself?”
The ambience shimmered as young Grimrix flexed his power. His very-solid image spat on its hands, and he grinned. “Easy, sir!”
“Don’t be too sure — some of these old spells have been renewed a lot of times. Watch out for underlying layers. When I push, rip it. Then slam it back fast! You’ve got to stay and cover for us.”
The young votary paled, shocked. “But if they catch me —” The ambience rang with grief louder than the bells of the city.
“Then you’ll be just as happy serving him as you are serving me,” Raspnex said. “Hold them off as long as you can. Don’t try to follow me, understand?”
“Not even —”
“Not at all! You arguing?”
“Of course not!”
“Good… Listen!”
One of the back doors shuddered noisily.
“Axes!” Rap said. “They’re trying the courtyard door. That one’s a poor choice. It’s got some occult tricks to it.”
“Nevertheless, the time to go has arrived,” Raspnex growled. “Get up, woman!”
“This’ll never work!” Rap said. “Soon as the kid opens a window, they’ll fry us!”
“They want us alive — you especially!”
Being fried might be the better alternative. Rap thought. Quite apart from a lingering revenge on his person, Zinixo would want to interrogate him on the whereabouts of the fairies.
The mundanes were all on their feet, the imperor holding the still-sleeping child.
“This may be rough,” the warlock told them. “But I’ve got some friends standing by to shield us as soon as we arrive — I hope. If the enemy got there first, then… well, it’s worth a try.”
“Wait!” Shandie said. “What happens after?”
“I told you. You go into hiding, and stay there.”
“No!” The imperor set his jaw stubbornly. “Maybe my realm has been stolen from me, but I will not have my mind stolen, also! I will not give up. I will fight!”
Good for him. Rap thought.
A fusillade of blows rocked the courtyard door. Now the other doors were under attack, also, and that meant a sorcerer had identified them for the legionaries.
“I will never rest,” Shandie repeated, “until I have won back my impire!”
“Indeed?” The dwarf sneered. “You and what army?”
The imperor glanced around. “These good friends will do for a start. Maybe there aren’t very many of them, just a handful, but they’re loyal and they’re good. Are you with me?”
“Gods save the imperor!” the signifer said.
“Gods save the imperor!” the others echoed, some louder than the rest. The room was so jangled with mixed emotions that Rap could not locate them all — fear and doubt and defiance — but he detected a blaze of anger from the beautiful Eshiala, and that was surprising.
Shandie was looking at Rap. “And you?”
“I have no choice,” Rap said with an approving smile. “Zinixo won’t rest, either — not until he has my guts in a pot and Krasnegar is gravel. Down with the tyrant!”
“Well said! Victory or death!” Shandie shouted.
It was fortunate in a way that he didn’t realize how hopeless his cause was.
“No!” The impress tried to wrestle the child away from her husband. “You must not!”
“My dear!” Shandie turned his back on her, and little Maya awoke with a cry of bewilderment.
“You must not risk our baby!” She grabbed again, and again he turned. This time she clung to him in an absurd dance.
“Eshiala! Be silent!”
“She is more important than your precious throne!”
They were yelling at each other, struggling together, the baby howling between them.
“God of Fools!” the dwarf muttered.
The front door collapsed in screams of rending wood and ruptured hinges. The temple bells were suddenly louder. A torrent of bronze-clad men burst into the house.
“I’ll take them!” Rap said quickly, anxious to avert serious violence. He was still capable of throwing sleep spells. Bronze clashed on chain mail, swords clattered. In a moment the entrance was plugged by heaps of snoring legionaries, so that no more could enter. Mundanes were easy. Grimrix was probing gently at the shielding, seeking the thinnest spot. The courtyard door was about to fail.
Then the shielding shuddered as if it had been kicked by a giant. That was more than mundane assault.
“Move us, Warlock!” Rap said. “Now!”
“Grimrix?”
“Ready!”
The ambience exploded in lightning and thunder.
3
Countess Eigaze sat down abruptly on the grass, Lord Umpily sprawling headlong beside her. Shandie almost dropped his daughter. The impress staggered backward into Sagorn, and an eruption of military obscenities announced that Signifer Ylo had landed in shrubbery. The ambience rang with echoes of the brute-force power the warlock had used to move them all.
Rap had a brief vision of the whole city spread out below him, wrapped in night and snow. In the distance, the ambience rumbled and flashed as Zinixo’s votaries stormed Sagorn’s house. There seemed to be plenty of them, but Grimrix was holding them off. The strength of the kid! He should have been the warlock, not Raspnex.
This secluded little rooftop garden was not located in the White Palace, as Raspnex had promised. That was typical of dwarves, though. Knowing he would have to sacrifice Grimrix to the other side, he had automatically left a false trail to divert pursuit. It probably wouldn’t work.
High among the turrets of the Red Palace, the courtyard was dense with tropical trees and bushes, occultly preserved from the Hubban climate. The air was hot and muggy and pleasantly earth-scented after the mustiness of Sagorn’s room. At least four sorcerers had been standing by, and now they were pouring power into the shield, patching the hole through which the fugitives had come. None of them was a troll, so the witch of the west was not present to welcome her unsuspecting guests.
Making shields was noisy work. Knowing his feeble powers would make little difference. Rap did not try to assist, but he felt as if his head were being hammered inside a white-hot furnace. He helped Eigaze to her feet. Ylo emerged from the bushes, cursing and rubbing scrapes on his arms. Everyone seemed to have arrived safely — a superb demonstration of precision sorcery. Most of the mundanes were whimpering, bewildered by darkness and the sudden change of location.
The occult clamor continued. The main shield of the warden’s palace was centuries old and thick enough to deter the Gods Themselves. To cut a hole in it must have taken much time and power, as well as being a highly unlikely thing to do. To plug the gap adequately would take just as much time and power, even if the evildoers let the operation proceed undisturbed — which they wouldn’t. Busy as he was, Raspnex was also talking to a gangling jotunn at the far side of the lawn, and yet he managed to flash a pebbly grin at Rap in the ambience. “So far so good!”
“Very nice work. Now what? We’ll be under siege in no time.”
“Now we move on!”
Even as Rap caught the thought, the makeshift shield shuddered and buckled. It held, though. The escape had been detected, naturally, and the battle was now joined, builders versus destroyers.
“So we are refugees within the White Palace?” Shandie demanded. He was still holding little Maya, shouting over her cries and peering through the darkness.
“The Red Palace,” Rap said.
“And how safe are we here?”
“Not very.”
Of course neither the imperor nor any of his mundane companions could sense the test of strength going on overhead, or the ominous tremors in the shield. Beyond it, city and impire s
lept on, unaware of the war that had begun — a war that might end very shortly.
A moment later, though, the tops of the trees exploded into flame, illuminating the night and the falling snow. They must have long ago grown right through the shielding, although obviously not out of their occult local climate. An eerie golden glow played over faces and flowers and shrubbery and reflected off the thickly drifted roofs behind them. The mundanes cried out at the spectacle.
“This way!” the dwarf boomed, scurrying off on busy legs. The fugitives surged obediently after him, some faster than others. Shandie was burdened by a struggling, hysterical two-year-old, and Rap threw a hasty sleep spell over the child. He checked on the older folk, and they seemed to be coping. Ionfeu had an arm around his wife. Umpily and Sagorn were both beaming at this opportunity to snoop inside the Red Palace.
The air was rank with eye-nipping smoke from the burning trees. The shielding sagged abruptly, then ballooned upward as the defenders threw power into it. Then it buckled again.
Raspnex had stopped at a low, circular parapet. The refugees garnered around and stared down into what seemed to be a bottomless dry well. The warlock cackled. “What sort of a back door would you expect from a dwarf?”
“I don’t believe I can see the ladder,” Lady Eigaze said.
“Ladder? You mean imps need ladders? You, faun — you want to throw or catch?”
“I’d rather catch,” Rap said. Throwing might require compulsion, and that would give him an attack of scruples. He sat on the stonework and swung his legs over. He could detect shielding a few stories below his boots, but not the bottom of the shaft.
The warlock’s occult image was leering at him. “It’s twice as deep us you can see. Two layers of shielding. You can drop free until you’re through the second.”
“You’re dropping some free advice, are you?” There was a proverb about gifts from dwarves. Rap pushed off and let himself go. He wouldn’t give Raspnex the satisfaction of seeing him use sorcery to slow his fall. He hurtled into the dark. Masonry flashed by his nose at breathtaking speed. His doublet pulled up and tried to choke him, and his cloak cracked to and fro like a whip overhead. The shielding seemed to rush up at him and he was through it and there was the next layer and that was gone and there was rock right below —
