Emperor Mage

by Tamora Pierce

  If Ozorne’s gods weren’t prepared to instruct him on polite behavior, she would have to do so.

  The mingled voices of her friends above the ground told her at last that dark had come. Guided by a helpful cat, using cat’s eyes to see in the dark, she found her way through the underground tunnels, until they had reached a trapdoor that opened into the Hall of Bones. “Thank you,” she told the cat as she tucked Zek into her shirt. “And now, you’d best get out. It’s going to be very busy here for a while.”

  The cat rubbed affectionately against her shins and raced off into the darkness.

  “Ready?” Daine asked Zek. She could see his wide eyes and feel him tremble slightly.

  No, he told her. Go ahead anyway.

  She climbed the ladder to raise the trapdoor half an inch. The room above was dark and empty. Climbing out, she looked around.

  She was in a niche between the mountain-runner nest and the hall where the smaller skeletons were kept. These wouldn’t do. Turning, she entered the hall of the larger dinosaurs, and went to the three-horn that faced the main door. It seemed right to begin with him. Rubbing her hands, she touched the skeleton’s long nose horn. White fire blazed. The dinosaur tossed its head, as if to shake off sleep.

  “Now, that’s the wrong way to go about it,” said a cracked voice. “You’ll kill yourself again, and you won’t rouse nearly enough of them.”

  Daine faced the Graveyard Hag. “You,” she hissed coldly. “Am I angry enough now? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “No,” was the frank reply. “I wanted you to wake the human dead. Give ’em a start to see corpses dancing in their streets. It’d be just like the old days. Well before your time, of course.”

  Daine rested a hand on the three-horn’s neck frill. It had moved up beside her and stood firmly braced, as if telling the goddess that she would have to go through it to get to Daine. “And when the dead lie back down, the mortals will forget. A couple weeks, a month, and it’ll seem like a bad dream. I want to give them a lesson that will keep them busy awhile.”

  “What might that be, dearie?”

  “Palaces are important,” replied the girl. “Rulers keep their gold and gems and art in palaces. The tax rolls and imperial records are here somewhere. If I rip this palace apart, it’ll take them years to clean up. They’ll have something besides going to war with their neighbors to do. And if I kill him, a new emperor might not be so bad. Guaranteed, they’d go back to the proper worship of the gods—I imagine that would make all of you happy.”

  The goddess frowned. “It’s not what I would do.”

  “What you would’ve done you should’ve done years ago!” Daine cried, voice breaking. “If you hadn’t let it go, and let it go, things might not have come to this state! But you didn’t, and you left it to me, so now we’ll do it like I want to! Add your own flourishes if you wish, but either help me or get out of my way!”

  The Hag sighed. “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to understand!”

  “We can’t just do whatever we feel like,” the goddess said. “There are rules, even for us. We can only work on something like this through a mortal vessel, for one thing. Do you know how few mortals can be used as a god’s vessel without dying on us? And I was reluctant to act, I confess. That nice boy Ozorne wooed me like a maiden—flowers on my altar every day, precious oils, public feasts in my honor—oh, it was grand! So, maybe I wasn’t strict with him, and now he’s too big for his breeches. It hurt when he stopped leaving flowers, you know. I was the last god still defending him in Mithros’s court.” She sighed and shook her head. “These men say they care for me, and I fall for it every time. Too good-hearted—that’s me.”

  “My heart bleeds buttermilk,” Daine snapped.

  The Graveyard Hag shook her stick at the girl. “If I didn’t need you—”

  “But you do. You said it yourself—vessels are hard to come by. So, can we get on with it, please? I need strength enough to wake up all these big ones.”

  “Strength.” The Hag rubbed her chin. “There’s always the rats. You’ll have to offer them something, though. Even I can’t make them help for nothing. There’s—”

  “Rules, yes, you told me.”

  The Hag tapped her on the head with her stick. “Don’t be impudent, Weiryn’s daughter! And think up something nice to offer my rats!”

  The tap made her ears ring and her eyes burn. She rubbed both; when she looked around again, the Graveyard Hag was gone.

  Zek poked his head out of her shirt. Are you all right? he asked. Your bones are humming.

  “I’m not surprised,” she murmured, patting the three-horn’s neck frill when he nudged her. “Zek, what can I offer rats?”

  Food, he replied immediately. Rats are always hungry. I could do with a bite myself.

  She dug in her pocket for raisins left from the meal Tano had given her in the tunnels. As the marmoset nibbled them, she thought hard and fast. On the edges of her awareness, she could feel rats approaching, hundreds of them. Where could she get enough food to bribe them all?

  She was in a palace. Most of the provisions for Varice’s fancy dinners were already here. Of course, the food stores were guarded by an army of rat catchers.

  Smiling grimly, she called to the hundreds of cats and dogs who worked the palace and grounds.

  As she conferred with them, rats streamed into the Hall of Bones through every hole, vent, and crack. Once the dogs and cats agreed to her request, she looked around. The great dinosaur skeletons now bore passengers: rats, black ones and brown, large and small; well-fed, glossy ones and scrawny river rats decorated with scars.

  A brown female with one missing eye stood at Daine’s feet. Herself told us you want to make a deal, she said. Something to trade for our wild magic, so you can wake these old bone piles.

  The three-horn apparently heard this. It looked down and nudged the rat with its nose horn.

  The rat bared yellow incisors. You don’t scare me, dead beast! she snarled. There’s enough of us here to do for you!

  Daine patted the skeleton’s neck frill. “It’s all right. They’re on our side—I think.”

  We don’t side with anybody that ain’t a rat, the female snapped. From the darkness all around them came chittering agreement from the others. Pipe down! ordered the rat chieftain. So what’s the deal, then, two-legger?

  “I plan to leave this palace a wreck; plenty of supplies buried under stone and in rooms the men can’t reach,” replied Daine. “So, if you give me what I need, the dogs and cats agree not to hunt anywhere in the palace or on the grounds for a year and a day. I can’t get rid of the human mages, but the dogs and cats will go—if you help me. That’s the deal.”

  The rats conferred, their whispers loud in the echoing hall. Finally the one-eyed female—who looked like the Graveyard Hag herself—squealed, We have a bargain!

  The rats moved into the second hall, where the smaller dinosaurs were kept. Once they were settled, Daine got to work, drawing on the power they gave her as, one by one, she woke the great skeletons. Down the row of horn-faced reptiles she went, rousing each of their kindred: the bull, spiked, close-horned, one-horned, thick-nosed, and well-horned dinosaurs. None were shorter than a man’s height at the shoulder, and some were half again as tall. Each came to life at a white-fired touch, and stretched lazily. They seemed to know she had business with them, for while they flexed limbs, tails, and bodies, they stayed in place, waiting.

  Next she went to the armored lizards, with their back and head spikes and their bone-tail clubs. Mixed in among them were their cousins, armored lizards, who had traded the tail club for heavy side spikes. Most of the armored lizards were as tall as the horn-faces. They, too, woke readily at her call, working kinks out of muscle and cartilage that were no longer there.

  After them she went to the plated lizards, remembering their macelike tails. Next she woke the snake-necks. While they weren’t armored as the others wer
e, their bulk and long tails would make fast work of obstacles.

  At last she reached the tyrant lizard and his kin, the meat eaters. Originally she’d thought they would be little help, since their arms were so weak-looking, but she had reconsidered. Something about those great skulls, with their forward-pointed eyes and saw-edged teeth, told her they would make excellent hunters. Their cousins the wounding lizards had stronger arms, with large claws.

  Once they and the eight mammoths were awake, she went to the front of the hall. Now she heard booming sounds at the doors; evidently someone had raised an alarm, and humans were trying to come in. Even if they had a mage to speak the opening spell, it would still take them awhile to enter. The bull three-horn leaned against the inward-opening doors, holding them shut.

  “Friends,” the girl said, voice echoing, “the master of this palace killed my friend, stole a dragon, and tried to cage me. He is a thief and a murderer. He needs a lesson. You can’t be hurt as my mortal friends can. You are ancient and powerful. Will you help me get revenge? I would like to rip this palace apart, stone by stone. I want to topple the columns, break the walls, crush the fountains. Will you do it?”

  From tyrant lizards to horn-faceds, the skulls of her allies pointed to the ceiling as one. She couldn’t hear their roar of agreement, but she felt it in the quiver of the ground under her feet.

  A four-toothed elephant wrapped his trunk around her waist, and placed her gently on the back of a shaggy mammoth, out of harm’s way. “Thank you,” she told him. To the others she said, “I’d druther not kill any two-leggers, but I know if you’re attacked, you’ll fight back. Just, please, look where you step, and don’t hurt anyone who’s smart enough to run.”

  The bull three-horn backed away from the doors. Both leaves slammed open, to reveal a very young mage and a squad of men from the Red Legion. The Hall of Bones was still unlit: the mage clapped to waken the light-globes. When they blazed into life, they revealed nearly seventy long-dead creatures who had left their pedestals and were walking toward the intruders.

  The mage screamed and ran. The guardsmen followed, dropping their spears.

  Outside the Hall of Bones, Daine’s army split into three groups. One, led by the great three-horn she had awakened first, turned in the direction of the wing in which the palace records were kept. The second group, led by the chief tyrant lizard, began in the great hall where they now stood, smashing pottery, windows, and benches; ramming the walls; and toppling fountains. A plated lizard discovered the anchor chain of an immense light-globe chandelier and began to tug it from its mooring.

  The third group, which included Daine, her mammoth, the bull three-horn who had blocked the door into the Hall of Bones, and others, was ready to go. “Zek,” she asked the marmoset, “could you find the way back to the emperor’s chambers?”

  He clambered down the front of her shirt and along the mammoth’s back until he perched in solitary grandeur on the creature’s head. That way, he said, pointing left.

  Daine tapped the mammoth with her left foot, and he obediently moved forward. The tiny animal on his skull lurched and almost fell, then grabbed tufts of the mammoth’s fur to use as reins.

  Two snake-necks, each over eighty feet long, wound their tails through the door handles to the Hall of Bones, and began to walk away. They didn’t stop, even when their tails were stretched as far as possible. In the end, it was the doors that gave way, snapping out of the frame and leaving it in splinters. The snake-necks then followed Daine, freeing their tails from the wreckage.

  Behind them a ringing crash signaled the end of the plated lizard’s attention to the chandelier.

  Zek’s next turn brought them into a long gallery lined with niches. In each stood a gold statue of a Carthaki emperor, decorated with gems and designed to show the monarch with those things that symbolized his reign. The dinosaurs got to work, pulling statues down and trampling them flat. One plated lizard made the windows his sole task, smashing each and every one with his spiky tail. A four-toothed elephant ripped doors off hinges with his trunk. People spilled from the rooms that opened into the statuary hall, stared at the dinosaurs, and fled.

  Near the end of the gallery, a side door leading to the nobles’ wing crashed open. Five people rushed in. Two of the women were veiled; a female slave carried a baby. When the women saw Daine’s friends, they began to scream. The old man and the boy put themselves between their womenfolk and the threat, though their hands trembled as they gripped their weapons.

  “Stop that noise,” Daine ordered. “No one’s hurting you.” The only one to listen was the slave, who tried to calm the shrieking infant. “Get out of here,” the girl went on. “My friends won’t hurt you if you don’t attack them and don’t get under their feet. Now move!” The humans ran.

  Daine looked at Zek. “Do we go the way they did?”

  Zek shook his head. Straight, he said, pointing to the doors at the end of the hall.

  In the distance they heard the crash of falling stone. Behind them the thick-nosed horn-faced dinosaur leaned on the marble wall. When an armored lizard joined him, the blocks of stone began to give way.

  Zek led them through a tree garden, which they left as it was. The next turn brought them into one of the palace’s many bathhouses, this one set aside for nobles. It seemed that those inside had not heard the distant sounds of mayhem. They were taken completely by surprise and fled without recovering their clothes. Tyrant lizards ripped up sections of the tile floor, laying bare a forest of gleaming pipes. A mammoth and a four-toothed elephant seized these, yanking them from their moorings and showering everything with hot and cold water. Armored lizards walked through rooms where clothing, robes, and towels were kept, catching them on their side spikes and dragging them along. Mud baths were overset, rubbing tables torn apart, steam rooms dismantled.

  Their next turn led them through storerooms. Snake-necks destroyed countless jars of raisins, olives, dates, fresh fruits, and vegetables, wielding their tails like whips. Tyrant lizards tore their sharp teeth through pounds of dried and salted meat. Daine noticed coolly that the food vanished once it had entered their mouths. The others preferred the grain stored in great burlap sacks.

  The last storeroom held drinkables in bottles, jars, and barrels. They had gone to work when the other mammoth in their group lifted a screaming female from a hiding place behind the casks. Pale blue fires danced around her body as she fought the trunk around her waist, without success. The mammoth brought her to Daine and set her gently on the floor.

  Daine stared down at Varice Kingsford, fingers knotting in her mammoth’s long fur. “Tell me why I shouldn’t have you ripped to pieces?” she demanded. “Were you at his killing? Were you serving pretty food and fancy wine?”

  Varice got herself under control, and shook her head.

  “Did you betray him to the emperor?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe me, but no. Maybe I would have, if he’d come to me. You don’t know what it’s like, to be in the service of a man like Ozorne. But I didn’t betray Arram.”

  Zek looked at Daine from his seat on the mammoth’s head. Why are you angry? he asked. She has been sad. She isn’t wearing the smelly stuff she likes, or the pretty colors on her face and hands.

  He was right. The woman was pale, her eyes red with long weeping. She wore no makeup at all. Her blonde hair, uncurled and unarranged, hung lank and straight down her back. Even her dress was plain, a loose-fitting gown of dove-gray cotton. Her mage’s robe was nowhere to be seen.

  Varice met Daine’s eyes. “You must think I’m useless and silly. Maybe I am. I just like things pretty. Is that so bad, to want people to enjoy themselves? Only, when you have the Gift, you can’t just go to parties and keep house. They expect you to study, and to do something in life. Arram—he always wanted me to learn more spells and be famous. I don’t want to be famous! What I do is useful. And I like using my Gift for cooking and baking. Great power hasn’t brought the mages I
know happiness or peace of mind.”

  Daine stared down at the blonde. Varice sounded like Ma, whose greatest pleasure had lain in dancing and working in the garden or kitchen. Quietly she said, “You needn’t explain yourself to me.”

  Varice blotted her eyes on her sleeve. “I begged,” she said, voice hoarse. “Sometimes it works. I said, what’s the point of killing Arram? Other monarchs would fear Carthak more, if he showed mercy to his betrayer. But it didn’t help. He made me watch when they killed— I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

  “Varice,” Daine said. The cold inside her prevented tears, but she felt bad for the older woman. “We have no quarrel with you. The gods are unhappy with Ozorne, and I’m helping them, but you don’t have to be involved. Get out of here. Shelter at the university, if you can get across the river, or the estates outside the palace grounds. You won’t be safe here.”

  Varice nodded and gathered up her skirts. Daine’s army parted to let her pass, then set about destroying the room. The horn-faced lizards, testing the walls, found they were wood, not stone. They began to smash them, wall after wall, working back through the storage rooms. When Daine moved on, some armored lizards and a mammoth stayed, as did the bull three-horn, to handle the stone walls. The echo of crashing stone followed Daine out.

  TEN

  STEEL FEATHER

  They came to a long passage where the ceiling was supported by columns studded with semi-precious stones. At the end waited a squad of determined-looking soldiers. Half bore small, double-curved bows; the rest long-bladed pikes.

  She held up a hand; her army stopped. “I wish you no harm,” she called. “But I want the emperor. Give him to me or get out of my way, but choose.”

  “We will defend our emperor to the death!” cried one.

  “That’s fair foolish. My friends are a bit hard to kill. They’ve been dead already.”

  One of them fired. His hands shook so much that the arrow flew wide.

  “Witch!” a man screamed. “Sorceress!”