A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  The jotnar returned to the auditorium, carrying him. They paraded around the arena, waving to the hysterically jubilant crowd. There were four of them — that much is certain, because two circled clockwise and two counterclockwise. Later reports that the usurper had been ripped into five pieces may therefore have been slightly exaggerated.

  2

  The loyalty spell had snapped in a pang of heartbreaking loss. Shandie felt as if he had just awakened from a nightmare, or discovered that his best friend was a traitor. He needed time to adjust, and if he felt that way, having been enthralled for only a few minutes, what of those who had been Zinixo votaries for years? They might not recover for months. At last he had a chance to speak with his wife and child… He turned to Eshiala as the jotnar went raining down on the dwarf. Zinixo screamed.

  The killers’ lightning-fast reaction told Shandie that he had no time for family or personal feelings. The next few minutes would be a pivot point in history. No one had expected this! With the old order in ruins, a new order must be proclaimed or chaos would prevail. Something would replace what Zinixo had torn down. The new millennium began now, for better or for worse. It was up to Shandie to seize control of the gathering.

  He ran across to the Opal Throne — passing Lord Umpily, who was just now struggling to his feet — and sprang up onto the seat the dwarf had so recently vacated. He was standing there with his arms raised in triumph as the blood-spattered giants returned and marched around, waving their gruesome trophies. He let the first hubbub fade a little, then bellowed at the top of his lungs:

  “Praise to the Gods for this deliverance!”

  A ragged “Amen!” rolled through the Rotunda.

  The audience had given him its attention, but only for a moment. Perhaps he had an advantage in that he had never been a sorcerer. If sorcery was banned from the chamber, then most of the audience must be feeling blind and deaf, but he could sense their mood changing by the second as they began to comprehend all the implications of the God’s miracle.

  The thrones of the Four had disappeared. No matter…

  “Wardens, take your places!”

  The three shot him odd glances. Then Lith’rian, Raspnex, and Grunth stalked to the platforms where those thrones had been. A mutter of disagreement rumbled and grew like an approaching earthquake. Men were rising to their feet.

  “Emine’s Protocol is ended!” Shandie cried at the top of his voice. “The new protocol begins!”

  That was a little better. That was more what the audience wanted. It raised a halfhearted cheer. But other voices were rising, also. Imminent riot crackled in the air like lightning.

  “I made certain promises!” Shandie yelled. “I now confirm them! Sorcerer Ishist?”

  Gnomes? What did the imperor want with gnomes? The muttering dwindled as speakers paused to listen. Some of those who had risen sat down again.

  “I am here, Imperor!”

  The thin voice was barely audible. Half the crowd said Sssh! to the other half.

  “I stand by my promise to Oshpoo. I shall pull my legions from Guwush! Will you save time and further bloodshed? When the orders are cut, will you convey them to the troops by sorcery?”

  “Gladly we will!”

  The hubbub died to an astonished muttering as the spectators realized that history was taking shape in front of their eyes.

  “Witch Grunth?”

  The huge woman stood on the western dais, hunched and grizzled, eyeing the young imperor with open skepticism. “Yes, Mundane Brother of the Center?”

  “I shall take immediate steps to end the impressment of trolls in Pithmot! You have our word.”

  She bared her great fangs. “My son is more concerned with that than I am. Convince him of your good faith — if you can.”

  Sweat trickled into Shandie’s eyes. If he could not even hold the wardens on his side, then explosion was inevitable. “I hereby appoint him proconsul with plenipotentiary powers. Will that satisfy you?”

  A troll? Astonishment rippled across the hall. Some of the imps cried out in disgust, but that rallied the other races. A gruff bass voice began a cheer and it was taken up. That was better, but there was still no real enthusiasm. Shandie caught his breath. At eighteen he had begun his military career in earnest when he faced down the Creslee Mutiny. This was worse than that, because he had a wife and child here with him. He had learned a few things since those days, though.

  “Friends, we are one warden short. Let us give tribute to Warlock Olybino, who died to proclaim the new protocol! A minute’s silence for a hero and a martyr!”

  It was a sleazy trick, but it worked. They had all seen Olybino die. Most of them had helped kill him.

  Of course only Shandie himself could end the silence. He allotted the dead hero about forty seconds, then spoke again. “The warlock decreed that in future new wardens should be elected, and I heartily agree. Let us make that a keystone of the new protocol that we must now forge! Let his own replacement be the first elected warden! Whom do you wish to be the new warlock of the east?”

  The reaction was even faster than he had expected. The audience roared a name.

  Rap and Inos and their son had been locked in a three-way embrace, mourning their own loss and paying no heed to millennia turning. Now the king broke loose and swung around, his face black.

  “No!” Rap said.

  Shandie chuckled silently. Some chance!

  He raised his arms and his voice again. “He declines! Tell me once more: Whom do you wish to be the fourth warden?”

  This time the roar was instantaneous and seemed likely to lift the dome off the Rotunda.

  “You seem to be the unanimous choice, your Majesty!” Shandie said.

  The faun scowled horribly and looked to his wife and son.

  They grinned at him.

  “No!” Rap said.

  Only two or three people in all history had ever refused a warden’s throne, and this made five times for him. He had invented the protocol, led the revolt, been the only sorcerer in the world not votarized by Zinixo, and he had no mundane loyalties except to his own obscure little kingdom, not even a loyally of race. His prayer had brought the God. He was the inevitable choice.

  Shandie looked around cheerfully. “We must convince a faun, brothers and sisters! Tell me that name again.”

  Louder still: “RAP!”

  Rap glared at Shandie and shook his head.

  With anyone else, Shandie might have brought up the daughter’s sacrifice, but not with this man.

  “King Rap! Remember the millennium! Will you have the history books mourn for what might have been? ‘If only Rap had accepted the warlock’s throne,’ they will say, ‘then the bad times might have been averted.’”

  Rap scowled.

  His wife gave him a gentle push.

  With a grimace, he stalked across to the vacant platform where the Gold Throne had once stood. He stopped before it, paused for a moment, head down, as if in thought. The Rotunda was breathless. Then he turned.

  “I have conditions! Four conditions.”

  “Name them!”

  “First, there shall be no more votarism.”

  “Agreed!” Shandie said, and looked to the audience. “Agreed?” He did not ask the wardens. At the moment they did not matter.

  “Agreed!” roared the assembled sorcerers.

  “And no more shielding! Sorcery shall be done openly, and never to do harm!”

  “Agreed!”

  Again Rap pulled a face, as if he had been hoping for an excuse to withdraw. “Third… You heard the God decree this building immune to sorcery. This is Longday. Let us hold a Sorcerers’ Moot here on Longday every year — to elect wardens, to judge their performance, and to approve their actions.”

  This time the roar was louder yet, and tailed away slowly. Shandie glanced around. Raspnex was leering. Grunth looked impressed. Lith’rian was white with fury.

  Rap seemed to sigh. “And finally, I think we need
a Council of Sorcery to advise the wardens. Twelve, one delegate elected from each race. Their first task will be to draw up the text of the new protocol.”

  The cheering began slowly for that one, then surged higher and higher as the audience saw the implications. Shandie had never heard an inkling of this proposal before, but it was brilliant. It would shackle the wardens hand and foot and neck, as the Emine’s Protocol never had. Rap could not possibly have made that up on the spur of the moment. He must have foreseen this whole little drama, but when had he had time to do that?

  Three thousand sorcerers were on their feet now, a rhythmic shout of Rap! Rap! Rap! beating the air like a drum.

  The new warlock stepped up on the platform and bowed to the assembly.

  3

  This could go on all day! Inos looked around the crowded rotunda. Everyone seemed ready to stay put until winter. The fat imp, whoever he was, was sitting all alone on the floor, clutching a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. He seemed to have forgotten it, though, being totally engrossed in the proceedings. Shandie was making another speech, something to do with elections for the proposed Council of Sorcery. Glittering in his orders and decorations up there on the throne, he was displaying a remarkable skill in politics, but he had been trained for that all his life. What of his family? Ignored if not forgotten, Eshiala knelt on the floor, trying to comfort a hungry, terrified, and desperate child.

  Inos herself had not had anything to eat yet, either, and felt faint because of it.

  And what of Krasnegar? Against his will, Rap had been sucked into a geopolitical swamp. He would do a fine job, but he would not wriggle free of it in short order, so Inos would have to attend to their kingdom by herself. Gath? Gath was staring entranced at his father the warlock, but Rap would have no more spare time for fathering than he would for ruling Krasnegar, and the thought of a fourteen-year-old heir apparent loose in the jungles of the Imperial court was enough to give her a migraine. Once the mothers of Hub learned about him, he wouldn’t last a week.

  Inos opened her mouth —

  And then closed it. Gath was still only a boy, but he had fought with sorcerers, sailed with raiders, and proved himself a hero in public — and that was just this morning. What else he might have achieved in the last couple of months did not bear thinking about. If she tried to order her son around now like the child he was, she would create a major conflict. Tact was needed.

  “Gath?” she whispered.

  He jumped and looked down at his mother with his father’s gray eyes. “Mom?”

  “I need your help!”

  “Oh?” He swelled. “Yes, Mom?” His smile revealed the tooth that Brak had broken for him, the day they left Krasnegar. She wondered if young Brak had been rotting in the royal dungeon ever since.

  “Krasnegar!”

  He blinked as if he had never heard the name before. “What about it?”

  “I must go back there! You have sorcerer friends, don’t you?”

  “Yes!” He beamed. “Several, actually.”

  “I knew I could depend on you! Come on, then.”

  She walked over to Eshiala. Even such beauty as the impress’ was barely proof against such a day. She looked up with pathetic relief as she saw help approach.

  Inos smiled comfortingly. “This will go on for hours!” she said. “Why don’t you come and have lunch with me?”

  * * *

  As they left the auditorium, Inos looked back and saw both Rap and Shandie staring after them. She waved a cheerful farewell and kept on going, along a corridor half full of stacked lumber.

  “I’m not sure I know the way!” Eshiala said.

  “Master Jaurg can find it. Can’t you?” Inos said.

  The blind youth smiled sadly. He had a hand on Gath’s shoulder. “Not easily, your Majesty. Once we are outside the Rotunda, then I shall be a sorcerer again.”

  “Of course — foolish of me. Well, let’s just try. I wonder where all the workmen are?”

  “Longday is a holiday,” the impress pointed out. “But what if there are guards on the outer doors?”

  “You’re the impress!” Inos said cheerfully. “Order them to report to Guwush immediately. Gath, can you carry Uomaya?”

  Gath obviously realized now how he had been trapped. He scowled, but he lifted the little girl. Maya was almost beyond protest.

  “Just don’t tell me to comb my hair!” he muttered crossly.

  “I was thinking of it,” Inos said.

  * * *

  It was early morning in Krasnegar. The sky was a washy blue, the sun lower than expected and the air cool, as the royal party materialized in the forecourt of the castle. A few wandering pedestrians gaped in rank amazement. The man-at-arms at the gate dropped his pike with a clang.

  “Well, it’s still here, anyway!” Inos said. Dear, dowdy, down-at-the-heels little town! How small and shabby it looked!

  Registering relief, Gath deposited a squirming Maya on the cobbles. “Everything seems all right.” He grinned. “We’re going to eat soon! Not you, though, Mom.” His prescience was working again.

  Inos shivered as the climate bit through her thin Thumian skirt and blouse. “Why not me?”

  “Because the council’s in session!”

  She felt a rush of relief that made her tremble. If the council was still meeting, then the kingdom had not dissolved in civil war. And it had not been flattened by the usurper. “Who’s in charge?”

  “Er — That’s queen’s work.” Gath’s face had assumed an odd expression. “Jaurg and I will be disposing of a roast kid.” He glanced at the impress. “With your help, too, ma’am, of course.”

  “Excellent beer you have here, Atheling,” Sorcerer Jaurg remarked with a smile — either to show that Gath was not the only one with prescience, or just to give his mother something else to worry about. Gath was a beer drinker now?

  Eshiala was staring up in astonishment at the spiky towers of Inisso’s castle, black against the pale northern sky. Maya had uttered a whoop and gone racing off after the white pigeons. Bystanders were dropping to their knees to honor their long-lost queen. Ignoring his fallen pike, the guard rushed in through the gate to spread the news.

  “Come on, then!” Inos said, starting for the gate. She waved graciously at the kneeling citizens, and they began to cheer. Pigeons clattered noisily upward to escape the princess imperial.

  * * *

  They were halfway across the bailey when a small impish woman in a fancy gown and bonnet came scurrying out the main door to meet them.

  Inos felt a jolt of surprise. Who was this? If the council was indeed in session — and while Gath might evade questions, he was never wrong when he did issue a prediction — then officials like Lin would be unavailable. But why had the guards summoned this unknown matron? The woman curtseyed. “You are welcome, welcome, your Majesty! Welcome back!” Whoever she was, her manner hinted that she was returning the keys.

  “Thank you. It is good to be back.”

  The small woman glanced at the others and her eyes widened. “And Prince Gathmor! You have grown, your Highness, if I may say so!” She bobbed a smaller curtsey to him, glanced over Eshiala and Maya inquisitively and then said, “And his Majesty is also well?”

  Inos drew a deep breath, but fortunately Gath’s supernormal reactions diverted her explosion.

  “Oh, Dad will be along later. He’s busy saving the world, still. Mom, this is Mistress Sparro.”

  “I don’t believe we have met?” Inos inquired sweetly.

  “I never had the honor of being presented, ma’am. The chairman and I were married after you left.”

  “The chairman?”

  Gath was purple with suppressed secrets. “The chairman of the council, of course, Mom. Who do you think has been holding the kingdom together while you’ve been away?”

  That was precisely what Inos did not know. Gath was only aware of such things because he was going to find them out shortly. He was not going to tell her a
nything.

  “Indeed, and my husband has done a wonderful job, if I may say so!” Mistress Sparro declared. Modesty was apparently not one of her greater afflictions.

  Inos would prefer to judge the state of the kingdom for herself. “Eva and Holi?”

  “They’re fine!” Gath said enthusiastically. “Boy, has Holi grown!”

  That was all right, then. The children could be greeted when she had time to greet them properly. “Mistress Sparro, please see to our guests.” Inos pulled a name out of the sky. “Lady Aquiala and her daughter, and Master Jaurg…”

  Mistress Sparro was curling her lip at the young jotunn. His breeches might be adequate dress in Nordland, but Krasnegarians regarded short sleeves as daring and bare chests as obscene.

  “Master Jaurg is our new court sorcerer,” Inos added spitefully. With Mistress Sparro’s squeal of alarm ringing in her ears, the queen swept into her castle.

  * * *

  She stormed along corridors and raced up stairs — always stairs, in Krasnegar. People leaped out of her way with cries of astonishment and joy. She threw open the door of the council chamber and marched in.

  There were only a dozen or so gathered along the big table. At this time of year, most of the citizens had duties elsewhere. Familiar faces turned with frowns to the intruder and broke into smiles of delight. Chairs scraped back. Elderly men and women heaved themselves to their feet, and for a moment nobody said a word. They were, perhaps, too overcome with surprise. Inos was completely out of breath.

  And speechless. The man at the head of the table was old Captain Efflio — retired sailor, and a recent arrival in Krasnegar. She had forgotten all about Efflio, the most junior member of the council. But of course when Kadie had dragged her away from a meeting of the council, she had put the captain in charge. He had been the only one present not worked up over some trivial argument, and she had expected to be gone for only a few minutes. So Efflio had continued to run the kingdom all this time?