The Wizard_s Fate e-2

by Paul B. Thompson

  Taking advantage of Tol’s brief surprise, the masked man lunged again, blade driving straight at Tol’s heart. No armor protected him, but Tol stood his ground and at the last minute bound up the short blade with a twisting movement. He straightened his arm, and two decades of training and battle experience turned the knife aside. The point of Number Six drove inexorably through scale mail, into flesh, bone, and heart.

  The attacker’s eyes went wide in shock, his fingers opening.

  The knife clattered to the pavement and a moment later his lifeless body joined it.

  Tol planted a foot on the dead man’s chest to pull his sword free. Around him the riot continued. There was no time to reflect on this senseless death.

  Kiya was down, one leg crumpled under her. Miya stood over her, ferociously fending off more enemies. Tol ran toward them, yelling. The sight of his bloody blade gave the Skylanders pause, and they fell back from the beleaguered Dom-shu.

  Kiya’s face was ashen with pain. Her knee was purpling, and she could not stand. Furious that she’d been hurt, Tol charged into the blue-masked gang, slashing right and left, curses flying uncharacteristically from his lips.

  An oiled cudgel whisked by the tip of Tol’s nose. His attacker recovered and raised the stick again. Tol let him swing, turning the edge of his sword to meet the blow. The end of the cudgel hit the dwarf-forged blade and split neatly along its entire length. Startled, the Skylander dropped the remnants of his stave and fled.

  Tol was about to give chase when he heard a clattering noise. There was no mistaking the hoofbeats of iron-shod war-horses. The City Guards!

  Over the heads of the struggling mob Tol saw a wedge of riders entering the square at the south end. They were soldiers all right, but not city guardsmen in white mourning mantles. This trailworn group sported muddied red capes.

  Using their horses and the butt ends of their spears, the riders tried to part the crowd. The mob was so thick the horsemen could make little headway.

  Tol and Miya stood over the injured Kiya. Common folk gave them a wide berth, and the masked troublemakers disappeared. The Skylander threat was gone, but waves of panic and rage flowed through the crowd, and Tol feared his little party would be trampled. He and Miya beat back anyone who ventured too close.

  A horn blared over the chaos. Tol and Miya exchanged a disbelieving look. They knew that call.

  “Juramona!” cried Kiya hoarsely.

  In a final pell-mell rush, a troop of horsemen parted the mob. Tol at last beheld the banner on the tip of the trumpeter’s spear: the Eagle Horde!

  Hailing the riders, Tol slammed his sword back into its sheath. The officer in the midst of the troop removed his helmet.

  “Egrin! It’s Egrin!” Miya cried, slapping her sister happily on the shoulder. Kiya winced but looked pleased as well.

  To Tol’s glad eyes, his former mentor seemed unchanged by the years. His auburn hair and thick beard might be a bit more gray now than when they’d first met, but Egrin still sat tall in the saddle, his back straight as a tent stake.

  Reining up before Tol, Egrin saluted. “My lord,” he said. “It is good to see you.”

  “And you, my old friend! How did you find me?”

  The elder warrior smiled slightly. “All of Daltigoth knows where Lord Tolandruth dwells. I merely asked the first soldier I came across.” Dryly, he added, “Once in the area, I had but to follow the sounds of battle. I knew you would not be far away.”

  “Marketing in this town is rude business,” Miya said, grinning. She’d helped her sister stand and now supported Kiya. “Try to strike a bargain and see what happens!”

  Egrin dismounted, chuckling. After clasping arms with Tol he said to the Dom-shu women, “It’s good to see you both. I rest easier every night knowing you guard Tol’s back.”

  Kiya grunted. “He needs us,” she said sourly. “Thirty-two years old and he still runs at danger like a young hothead.”

  Tol protested, “I am a temperate man!”

  “Temperate as a bull,” Miya said. She asked Egrin, “Has he always been so?”

  “No more so than most young men. I would call him bold rather than hotheaded.” The marshal regarded his renowned former comrade fondly. “Bold, with a knack for doing the unexpected.”

  “And lucky,” Kiya said. “Lucky as the gods’ favorite.”

  Tol gruffly put a stop to their discussion. A grimmer task needed doing. Kicking through the debris, he found the body of the gang leader he’d dueled. He squatted in the wreckage of the morning market and rolled the dead man over. He removed the fellow’s blue mask.

  To his astonishment the face of Pelladrom Tumult was revealed, the young noble Tol had seen standing at the new emperor’s side. Why was a high-born, well-positioned young warrior leading a gang of thugs smashing up pushcarts?

  “Who is he?” Egrin asked. Tol told him, and the marshal said urgently, “Cover his face!”

  Sellers were returning to the square, collecting around the famous Lord Tolandruth. Tol let the blue kerchief fall, hiding the dead man’s features. Egrin summoned two of his own men to remove the body.

  “I offered him quarter, but he forced this conclusion,” Tol said, as the scarf was tied in place over Pelladrom’s face and his body thrown over a saddle.

  Drawing near so only Tol could hear, Egrin whispered, “Lord Enkian is on his way to Daltigoth for Prince Amaltar’s ascension.”

  Enkian was Warden of the Seascapes, the province farthest from Daltigoth. Summer rains had swollen the major streams between the northwest coast and the capital. It might be another three or four days before Enkian arrived.

  Tol sighed. Enkian had never liked Tol and would be furious at the killing of his youngest son, but the fight had been a fair one. Tol said as much, but Egrin shook his head, insisting, “You don’t understand. Enkian does not come alone! He brings five hordes!”

  “Five thousand men?” Tol said, voice rising.

  Although out of favor with the prince for his criticism during the war, a noble like Lord Enkian, coming to pay his respects to Pakin III and swear loyalty to his successor, was allowed to bring an entourage to the capital. For a modest man like Egrin, that meant twenty riders. A rich, prominent lord like Tremond of Thorngoth might bring a hundred, all dressed in his personal matching livery. Five hordes was not an honor guard but a warband.

  Egrin’s face and voice were grim. “We had word of this as we rode south. People thought the Tarsans were invading!”

  “What does he think he can do with five hordes? Seize the city? The Daltigoth garrison numbers ten times that many.”

  “I don’t know what he intends, but he will not take the death of his son kindly. If he has five thousand men at his back, you must be careful, Tol!”

  “Let him seek me out,” Tol said. “I’ll not hide what I’ve done.”

  Unhappy, the marshal agreed. He returned to his waiting retainers and ordered two off their horses. With canvas and planks from a shattered stall, the soldiers made a litter for Kiya. She didn’t like being carried but her knee was painful enough that she relented after only a few protests. Egrin had accepted Miya’s enthusiastic offer to lodge with them in their hired villa, so Tol and Miya mounted the empty horses and led the Eagles home.

  Despite the dark turn the day had taken, the journey to the villa was a happy one. Like the Dom-shu sisters, Egrin was very dear to Tol. The elder warrior was his second father, a substitute for his real family, whom he had not seen in years.

  Three years after leaving to live in Juramona, Tol had returned to visit his family. He’d intended to remain a week but had departed after only three days. Although pleased to see them again, and they to see him, it had been an awkward visit. They didn’t know how to act around him, and he no longer seemed to have anything in common with them. His life in Juramona was utterly foreign to them. Where his mother, Ita, had cried for the changes in her boy, Bakal was gruff, yet obviously proud of Tol’s position as shield bearer t
o Egrin, Warden of the Eastern Hundred. As his mother hugged him goodbye, Tol had surreptitiously pressed into her hand a little money he’d saved. After taking leave of his father, and enduring a quick, embarrassed kiss from middle sister Nira (eldest sister Zalay was preparing to deliver her second child), Tol had mounted his horse and ridden away.

  That was the last time he’d seen them. Apart from everything else Egrin meant to him, he was the only one of Tol’s old comrades to have known his family.

  Once the party reached the Rumbold villa, a healer was sent for to tend Kiya’s knee. Having been in the saddle since before dawn, Egrin and his men were famished. Tol took them down to the kitchen and they dined together at two big tables.

  “You look very well, Egrin,” Tol said, and he truly meant it. “Hardly a day older than when I first rode into Juramona with you on Old Acorn.”

  Egrin waved a dismissive hand. “You were a child then; all adults seem elderly to the young.”

  He pressed Tol for an account of his recent adventures. Tol told of the final battles before the walls of Tarsis (discreetly leaving out all mention of Hanira and the golems), and his subsequent hazardous journey through the hill country. He made the magical attacks on his party sound like natural storms. Without hard proof Mandes was responsible, Tol would not accuse him publicly.

  Egrin was saddened to hear of Felryn’s death.

  “A good man, and a wise and gentle healer.” He raised his wooden cup, brimming with beer. “May he stand forever at the right hand of Mishas!”

  Tol and the sisters echoed the marshal’s toast. When Tol related the tale of Xanka and the Blood Fleet, Egrin shook his head in disbelief.

  “At the mercy of this bloody buccaneer and you bullied him into a duel? Then you slew him before his crew and fellow captains?”

  Tol shrugged. “I could see Xanka was a coward at heart. If I challenged his courage in front of his men, I knew he’d fight me. To do anything else would have cost him too much prestige, maybe even command of the Fleet.”

  Egrin asked to see the blade Tol had used to defeat the pirate chief. Number Six was duly handed over. Egrin fingered the blade, pressing his thumbnail against the flat. Despite the use Tol had put it to, the curved blade was as bright and smooth as the day Mundur Embermore had given it to him.

  “I’ve heard rumors of this metal for years,” Egrin said, holding up the saber and running his gaze down the cutting edge. “Only a few in the dwarf clans know the secret of its making.”

  “Is it magic?” asked Miya.

  “Not at all. The dwarves use a special forging process to temper ordinary iron into something far stronger-‘steel’ as the pirate captain said.” He handed Number Six back, adding, “There’s no armor in the empire could turn aside that blade. I wish I had one for every man in the Eagle Horde.”

  Tol had finished his recollections. Since he hadn’t mentioned it, Miya told how he had been summoned to a vigil over the late emperor’s remains. Egrin’s bushy brows rose in surprise.

  “That is an honor indeed!”

  Miya smirked. “Husband thought so. Especially since he didn’t keep watch alone.”

  “Take care!” Tol interrupted, raising his voice. Though among friends, he would not see Valaran compromised. Hearing his concern, Miya subsided and Egrin let the matter drop.

  The healer arrived, a garrulous old woman named Truda. She examined Kiya’s knee, gave the welcome pronouncement that it was bruised not broken, and wrapped it with linen bandages and a splint. Leaving the Dom-shu woman a bottle of medicine to ease the swelling and pain, Truda treated the rest of them to the latest street gossip.

  “There was fighting in every square this morning,” she said. Her purse clinked heavily with the money she’d earned treating the injured. “Skylanders, Nazramin’s Wolves, the whole lot. They say you, my lord, quelled one of the riots all by yourself.”

  Tol sighed. People told such lies about him, even if they were complimentary lies. Miya and Kiya set the old healer straight. Truda was disappointed, but her black eyes narrowed with unpleasant mirth.

  “Your Lordship did slay the chief of the Skylanders, did you not?”

  Tol was astonished word had spread so quickly. Egrin’s men had brought Pelladrom’s covered body directly to the villa. He was lying in the cellar until Tol and the marshal could arrange an audience with Amaltar to tell him what had happened.

  “People are talking,” Truda went on. “They say the Skylanders’ chief was of high birth. I’d be happy to quell that rumor, if I could.”

  Tol ignored the blatant plea for gossip. He paid her twice her normal fee and the healer was swiftly ushered out.

  With Kiya taken care of and the Juramona men made welcome, the difficult visit to Amaltar could not be put off any longer. Tol and Egrin departed to make themselves more presentable for an audience with the future emperor.

  Alone in his room, Tol poured cool water from a ewer into a shallow basin and raised a double handful to his face. Staring at his reflection in the mirror, he paused.

  In the moment of his greatest triumph his enemies seemed to be multiplying. Could he best them all? Staunch friends, a strong arm, a blade of dwarf steel, and the Irda nullstone were among his assets; Were they enough?

  What of Mandes? The sorcerer had defamed him, stolen his glory, and besmirched his honor for more than a decade. Was Mandes responsible for all the treachery that seemed to surround him? If he denounced Mandes, would Amaltar even believe him? Mandes had become a highly trusted advisor to the new emperor, while Tol had been absent a long time.

  On the sea journey to Daltigoth, he had contemplated what should be done about the rogue wizard. Mandes was not merely a faithless liar, he was a murderer. Tol was more and more certain he had killed Tol’s men at the Golden House in Tarsis and killed Felryn and Frez as well.

  Tol dashed the water on his face. His resolution was firm. There could be only one solution to the problem of Mandes.

  Whatever happened with Nazramin or Lord Enkian, the Mist-Maker could not be allowed to live.

  Although they hadn’t been summoned, Tol and Egrin had no trouble gaining admittance to the imperial palace. The guards, hailing Lord Tolandruth, ushered the hero of Tarsis through the Inner City to the palace steps. Draymon, commander of the Palace Guard, appeared and sternly ordered his men back to their posts.

  “My lord,” he said. “I had no word you were coming.”

  “I come on my own. May I see the emperor?”

  “He is in council now-”

  Egrin said, “The matter is pressing.”

  Draymon was not about to forestall two such formidable visitors. With a nod, he conducted them himself to the imperial council chamber.

  Loud voices came to them through the closed doors. Egrin professed surprise. Emperor Pakin III would never have allowed such a contentious enclave.

  Draymon looked grave. “Our new master, may the gods guide him, is not the man he once was.”

  He left them while he entered the chamber to announce them. The heavy gilded doors did not allow them to hear his measured tones, but the chorus of loud denunciations his words engendered carried clearly to Tol and Egrin. They exchanged a look.

  When Draymon finally returned, his face was red with embarrassment, but he said, “The emperor will see you at once.”

  Tol surrendered his sword, and Egrin likewise removed his saber and dagger. Draymon took the weapons, but delayed Tol’s entry with a quick jerk of his head.

  “They’re all there, including Prince Nazramin,” he muttered. “Beware, my lord.”

  Tol nodded. “Thank you, Captain. A favor? Stay close to this door-with my sword.”

  Another man might have smelled a nefarious purpose in such a request, but Draymon vowed he would remain outside the council chamber until Tol and Egrin returned.

  Tol grasped the smooth, cold door handles and shoved the heavy portals apart. The sunlit chamber beyond was much as it had been when he’d last seen it,
when he’d volunteered to lead three hundred foot soldiers to Hylo to find the unknown enemy threatening Ergothian hegemony over the kender kingdom. That quest had led to the death of the monster XimXim and the loss of many good comrades.

  Amaltar’s assembled advisors ceased bickering as Tol and Egrin entered, but their expressions could hardly be termed welcoming. The crowd parted, revealing Amaltar seated at the head of the long table.

  The soon-to-be emperor looked even less well than he had when Tol had seen him just days before. His skin was ashen, a sickly color only made more obvious by the deep scarlet of his robes. His dark eyes, once so intelligent and penetrating, stared out from deeply hollow sockets. High cheekbones, once the envy of many a noble lady, now stood out in such sharp relief his face resembled a skull.

  Tol knelt, as he’d been told to do when last presented to Amaltar. Egrin’s astonishment at the action was plain. Warlords of the empire knelt to no one! But he too slowly went down on one knee.

  “Your Imperial Highness,” Tol said. “Thank you for receiving us.”

  “Lord Tolandruth, welcome. Egrin Raemel’s son, welcome. Come before me.” Though his chest rattled slightly with phlegm, Amaltar’s voice was still strong.

  Tol rose. Egrin trailed him through the line of glaring councilors: Chamberlain Valdid; Oropash, head of the White Robes; Red Robe leader Helbin; Lord Rymont, commander of the imperial hordes in Lord Regobart’s absence; lesser lords of the hordes based in the capital; and Prince Nazramin.

  Amaltar’s younger brother sat at the end of the lengthy table. Turned partly away, Nazramin’s posture was more proof of Amaltar’s weakness. Such casual contempt would never have been dreamt of in the presence of Pakin III. The Prince Amaltar Tol remembered wouldn’t have allowed it either.

  Nazramin was dressed in impeccable white, but his attire was so stylishly cut and so lavishly sprinkled with pearls and sparkling diamonds it could hardly be called mourning dress. He ignored Tol’s progress through the room, blithely studying his nails.

  Mandes was there as well, hovering behind the emperor’s chair. Though Amaltar’s personal physician and seer, Mandes did not have the status to sit at the council table. Hands clasped across his belly, the sorcerer kept to the background, one of many aides, assistants, and servants of the great men gathered around the Emperor of Ergoth and his high councilors. Unlike Prince Nazramin, however, Mandes met Tol’s gaze. The sight of his bland countenance filled Tol with unexpected fury; he clenched his jaw to keep the emotion from showing on his face.