Certainly, the area should never have been left unguarded. But perhaps the complex of chambers was banned to the citizens of the city. The crime committed must have been great to have resulted in the wasting of such an opulent setting for rule. There was also the possibility that the area was the domain of some spirit, either mistakenly summoned by a court wizard or never properly put to rest. Tralane had known of entire towns and their protecting castles that were laid to waste by such rampant demons, who overcame their earthly masters and practiced their hatred of death by destroying all living things within their reach. Plague was an equally unpleasant explanation, though a simple one might be the retreat from fashion of large, open spaces for the practice of power. However, Tralane did not detect the skeletons that would have been neglected in a general outbreak of disease; and he could not conceive of any power, once gained and acknowledged, refusing to take advantage of all its privileges.
With the numerous possibilities of danger dancing in his mind, and with the knowledge that, whatever the reasons for the ballroom's lack of use, the dungeon that led to it was still an active part of the city, Tralane crept across the room. His eyes sought to penetrate every darkened recess that could possibly hide an enemy. His feet sank soundlessly into the carpet of dust. He was startled by a motion, only to discover that the woman was following him across the room. He motioned for her to go back to the hidden entrance, but she ignored his warning and stopped at roughly the same distance from him that she had kept on the stairs.
"It's your skin as well as mine, then," Tralane whispered in resignation.
He set out again in a half-crouch, the sword which had never left his hand since his entry into the mountain cutting the air ahead of him. Only when he reached the opposite end of the room and was flattened against a shadowed wall did it occur to Tralane that, if the woman was from the fortress, she would know the location of his goal. He could not trust her untroubled behavior in the hall, since she might have forgotten, or simply not cared about the dangers in the area. But perhaps the shock of her term in the dungeon and her sudden release had not touched the most basic memories of her heritage, such as the location of the Emperor's throne room.
"The Emperor," he whispered to her as she swung behind him to stand passively by a frayed, partially fallen tapestry. Apparently, his precautions had infected her disinterested attitude. "Can you take me to him?" he continued. "You can escape, and I'll help you if I can, but can you show me where the Emperor stays?"
Tralane continued scanning the ballroom, wishing for a guard, a stray noble, a worker, anyone other than a mute to question. He repeated the word Emperor several times until he was beginning to despair of receiving any help from her. He took a step forward, setting out in a random direction, when she cut in front of him and proceeded boldly, if to his mind foolishly, into the next room.
The chamber they entered was much smaller and completely bare. The exit opened into an arched hallway, and there the sacred precincts of royalty ended. The walls had once been covered with sheets of milky stone, most of which lay shattered on the ground, emitting a feeble glow. The bold depiction of gods and heroes, all manifestations of earthly pretentiousness by mortal rulers, dwindled into detailed carvings of wooden arch frames fashioned to resemble the branches of trees from which seemed to peer strange, shadowy faces. In a change of style—either an old traditional view that had not yet been completely replaced or a new artistic perspective that was beginning to spread—there were clusters of decorations, stands, pieces of broken doors and molding done in a curious mixture of stone and wood. The two elements seemed to merge and were carved with delicate, repetitive patterns of geometric shapes. Another fashion, far less frequent but much more fascinating to Tralane, depicted voluptuous women with faces a shade too square, with six fingers instead of five, and with what appeared to be a third eye on their foreheads, done as statues of black stone. The figures varied in size but were consistent in their smooth, curving lines, as if a lost being from a distant world had spent his time feeding the jaded tastes of the inhabitants of the fortress with new, exotic fantasies.
Tralane found the variety at first entertaining; but after a while, it became more wearisome than if the citizens of the city had settled comfortably into one motif. There was a sense of desperation in the jumble of rooms and clash of styles. A chamber whose floor was covered with rotting pillows, and whose walls were etched with lewd drawings, stood directly opposite a long room with a low ceiling that opened up into distant galleries of books. The confusion was unsettling in that it revealed a hysterical search for something by shaping and manipulating space and elements. As they passed the workshops of artisans, banquet halls, and private wardrobes and baths of nobles, it became apparent that the forms were empty of life, the elements used ruined by meaninglessness.
Finally, they came to a series of rooms given over to the collection of idiosyncratic objects of desire—daggers, unidentifiable beasts' heads, swatches of materials in all textures and colors, and spherical objects in a gradation of size and color, from small and dark to huge and light. Suddenly, the woman stopped, and Tralane almost ran into her trembling figure.
The bard stepped forward and examined the room she had stopped beside. He tried to follow her eyes to see what the source of her fear was, but all he saw was a forest of masks hanging down from the ceiling on threads of various lengths. The masks stared emptily out at him. He entered the room, brushing the false faces away with the point of his sword. An eerie sensation came over him as he probed deeper into the room. The blank, pale outer faces yielded to deeper layers of comedic, tragic, elemental, and spiritual disguises. All of them were finely crafted, with the proper shades of natural or symbolic coloring each mask required to achieve its expression. He reached out and touched one of them, and recoiled as the warm substance from which they were made felt uncannily like living flesh. He laughed nervously, sending ripples through the veils of faces that surrounded him, falling from the ceiling all the way down to his feet. Dismissing the masks as yet another aberration of the elite fortress-city dwellers, Tralane turned to leave, when a pair of living eyes, where only blackness should have glowered back at him, arrested his attention.
Tralane froze in mid-motion, his mind drawn to the eyes which stared at him from behind a blank, crystal mask. The crystal was green, and resembled the Jade Warrior's facial construction. For a moment the Warrior was resurrected in Tralane's imagination. But the eyes were sunken, showing corners of flesh behind the eyelets.
They were human eyes, but Tralane failed to find comfort in them.
"Welcome, Tralane," a deceivingly gentle and soothing voice said, drifting to Tralane from the direction of the eyes. "I had not expected to find you slinking about in my own refuge, but it is a pleasant surprise to have you. I see you've met the Lady Akyeetha. A fine woman, even if she is the last of her degenerate race. She will return to confinement shortly, after I have dealt with you."
"Are you the Emperor?" Tralane asked boldly, taking in the information the Emperor offered but not acknowledging it.
"The Emperor of Many Faces is my title."
"What is your name?"
"I've forgotten." There was a moment's hesitation. "It's been so long since I've had a use for one."
"You seem to remember mine."
"Ah, but you are different." There was a malevolent languor in the Emperor's words. "You are the quarry."
"I was."
"No longer?"
"I stand before you in contempt of your wishes."
"Contempt is a strong word. You have inconvenienced me, as far as my servant is concerned."
"Your son, the Jade Warrior?"
There was a flicker in the eyes, and the rhythms of the Emperor's speech stumbled slightly. "Yes … You won more than I thought you could. Still, you have graciously returned the Eye and Fangs of Wyden to my care. For that, I am grateful."
"Don't talk as if you were about to get them back."
"Oh?
" The masks around the crystal face started. "So the pup snarls? You've come some way since Agathom surprised you in his tent."
Thoughts coalesced in Tralane's mind, and lightning illuminations from their merging gave him flashes of insight.
"Though I'll wager you haven't learned to match your tongue and spirit with your nature," the Emperor continued. "No, you are still a coward at heart, Tralane, hiding behind a display of ignorance and cowardice."
"How would you know that?"
"I would know, better than any." The Emperor's tone lent his words an air of omniscient condescension.
Tralane replied gruffly, "And would a brave emperor rule over a phantom empire?"
"What? Can—do you dare question my power?"
"I haven't seen your power, Emperor. All I've seen are two wretched prisoners, one tortured to death, the other mutilated into silence. Where are the warriors, servants, nobles? Where is the city that should be clinging to the walls of your fortress, its people basking in the glow of your strength? Where is your empire?"
The masks quaked as the emperor, his face still hidden, moved brusquely forward. Tralane retreated, wondering if he had provoked too sharply. Yet he had to maintain his bravado in the face of the Emperor's advance in order to gain mastery of the game he was trying to set in motion. Containing the fear that would, in earlier times, have been reason enough for him to part with the Emperor's company, Tralane leveled the point of his sword and stood his ground at the doorway. A grim sense of purpose steadied his hand, and his courage rallied around the key to his quest. The guile that was his life's trade and the strength newly discovered in his love for Cumulain fell into harmony, allowing his mind to think clearly even while death was a mere sword's length away.
Flight or rash action, the staples of Tralane's life, failed to satisfy his hunger. He was baiting a line and patiently waiting for the most dangerous sustenance he could desire—knowledge. The Emperor seemed intimate with his history, a natural conclusion even without the Emperor's testimony; through contact with the Eye and the Jade Warrior, the ruler had been able to follow Tralane's moods and movements. Yet how would he know, better than any, as he claimed, that Tralane had marked himself with the brand of cowardice and lived his life accordingly? Why should a ruler of a world distant from Tralane's bother to discover that an insignificant bard's love of tales was founded on an inability to pursue the objects and engage in the actions of his heroes? Of what matter was it to the Emperor that Tralane would indeed rather slink—and had done so on many occasions—and bandy assuaging words instead of testing truth in a confrontation? In short, how did Tralane come to be so important in the schemes of a far-off sorcerer?
The amulet had found its way to him, drawn as Gibron had informed him, by the forces focused on Tralane. But why was a youthful bard and archer a fulcrum of power, fated to become a Keeper, and not a sorcerer like Agathom or the magic woman who had brought the plainspeople to their Nushu Land? Only one thing could have made Tralane so crucial to whatever plan the Emperor was formulating. A relation existed between himself and the Emperor, one which was enough of a threat to upset those plans, and close enough to warrant care and discretion in the elimination of that threat.
Tralane was sure of his hold on the truth. He knew himself to be a son, and the man hidden behind the mask to be a father. And he decided that the Emperor of Many Faces was no one else but his father.
He withheld speaking questions pertaining to his abandonment in the care of Mathi, to the identity of his mother—for he was no spawn of Wyden, judging by the Jade Warrior—and to the reasons why the Emperor had sought to hide behind the Warrior's cryptic remarks and had not simply acknowledged their relationship. Tralane struggled with the pain of his father's rejection and the fact that his own sire had doomed him.
The Emperor stopped short of Tralane's sword point. The youth could hear heavy, tremulous breathing through the mask, as if violent emotions were being stifled by the false visage. The Emperor's jade-and-turquoise gown, partially visible through the screen of masks, rustled with an impatient movement. Tralane's hope that the rage would be converted into speech rather than action bloomed as the Emperor began to speak in a low, guttural tone. His eyes glowed with fierce intensity. Madness seemed to burst out from them in long, sinewy strands, enveloping Tralane and nurturing the seed of that same madness within the bard.
"My empire," the Emperor said, arched over Tralane's sword but carefully avoiding its touch, "is all around you. It is the air we breathe, the land we stand on, the walls, the sky, the stars, and the moon you call Wanderer blocking out the emptiness and filling the night with light. I am ruler of all that is in this existence, just as I am lord of all these faces here in my chamber. What do I need with people? Warriors? Craftsmen? Farmers? I live by my own hand, for my own amusement, untroubled by petty challenges to my power. After you are gone, there will be no one in all the worlds that ever were who could even attempt to strike me down."
The Emperor took a step back and turned his head aside. He gazed at one of the blank masks near him, touched it with a finger and set it into a slow spin. He looked again on Tralane.
"I was once an adventurer, Tralane," he began, his voice calm but not as soothing as it had once been, "as you are now, young and foolish in the realities of the world and of magic. In my studies, I undertook to probe the realms of sorcery, seeking for some key, some secret with which to better my master and prove to him and myself how worthy I was of power. One night, as I lay drunk with vapors, leaving my mind open to those realms I wished to explore, I touched upon a creature who called itself Wyden, and claimed to be a god. I heard its call, but in my ignorance I took it to be a minor demon crying for a worshiper. I laughed at its tale of surviving all the gods in a world beyond the ending of all worlds, with no one but a few weak members of a dying race to give its existence meaning. This Wyden promised me power, and again I laughed, saying, "What do I need with an empire of death?" Again it called, its voice fading as it made a last attempt to win a convert, and promised me the freedom of travel across the broad width of time as it rolled implacably forward like a massive wave, filling each moment with a flash of existence. Still I disbelieved, but the words, distant as they were, entertained me with their inventiveness. I decided to save what I thought was a mere demon and use it for a familiar. I answered its call, binding my mind to the creature's so I could drag it to me through my paltry powers. But as soon as we were linked, I felt myself being stretched out and drawn across space. My eyes were blinded by the blinking of many images. I was in a thousand places at once, each segment of my body occupying a different point in time and space. I tried to anchor myself in my own world, but I had already left it. There was a floating time in an endless expanse that surged about me. There were wars, plagues, and patches of idyllic splendor. Gods and sorcerers of many worlds caught a glimpse of my passage, were puzzled, and chased me briefly. But I was pulled along with great speed and easily escaped their scrutiny.
"Then I saw this city, and the image did not fade from my mind. So I flew to it as a harak dives after fish in a stream. I fell somewhat roughly on the ground before the gates. A pale, sorry band of lords and ladies waited for me within and a great, sickly worm, its head reared up, watched me from a little further down the slope with its single eye. My head was filled with laughter that was not my own.
"I was comforted by the other humans. Some of them were survivors of the race that had built the city, others were dabblers in magic from different worlds, duped by their own greed, naiveté or stupidity into the service of Wyden. The two groups bickered briefly over me; but, as soon as I had gathered my wits, I joined the gathering of fools like myself, since I had nothing in common with the natives of this world. I was not about to accept my fate, as these others were content to do. I was a teller of tales in my own world, and I knew the tricks gods and mortals played on one another. I explored the fortress even as I helped to maintain it as a temple to Wyden. I read the manuscr
ipts, after learning something of the native written language, and I used what I learned to befriend the ancestors of the city-builders. They were eager for one of the off-worlders to join them, and to mediate for them among the more numerous aliens to their land, for they feared our frustrated desire for revenge against Wyden would fall on them. They feared rightly. Daily, we cursed the ancient people who had built the fortress city and sustained the god Wyden beyond the proper ending of all life. And our hatred and fear was the sustenance of the god, who had chosen his followers for those traits. So there was little I could do for them, except listen to their complaints and learn their ways.
"As I consoled them, they showed me the secret passages, the mechanisms of defense that had lain dormant for millennia, the libraries of sorcerers, and the pleasure chambers they had once enjoyed freely. One night they brought me here. When I saw all these masks, I knew I had found my weapon against the god.
"The next morning I neglected my duties and went down the mountainside to speak with Wyden. The god watched me, but did not yet dare destroy so potent a source of nourishment as I had become for disobeying its will. I stood before this monster, though I will admit I quaked within myself with fear, and pointed at its enormous eye.
"’You have lied to me, 0 great worm,' I said with all the wind I could muster. ‘You told me you had no worshipers, and would grant me power if I came to you.'
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