by Glen Cook
Later, he asked, "And why are you here? You should be getting your army under control."
"Those brigades have been written off. A while without pay, supplies or word from home will make them more amenable. But you're part right. I can't wait forever. Sooner or later, Nieroda will turn eastward. Probably after defeating Cuneo, while the troops are heady."
"That's not saying why you're here, only why you're not there."
"The will of Chuchain? I think the Great Ones mean us to be allies."
Gathrid half expected that. Visions of Kacalief returned. The excesses there had been committed by the Toal, but this was the man who had given the order to march.
"I know," Ahlert said. "It's ridiculous. We're enemies. I destroyed everything that meant anything to you. I lured your sister to her death. And you slew my myth of invincibility by slaying her. My throne will never be secure again. I can't raze Ventimiglia to expunge that memory. And you stole my chance to control all four Powers before they fully wakened. I had Chuchain, Bachesta and Ulalia. I would've had Suchara but for foul luck. All ambition is vanity."
"Still . . . "
"Where lies the greater evil?"
It had been laid out like playing cards face up. Gang up on Nieroda. Make alliance with the old enemy, or face the Dark Champion alone.
Gathrid did not like it. It forced another questionable decision. He had faced nothing else since discovering the Great Sword. Nothing in this mad world, now, could be reduced to black and white.
"You convince the mind but not the heart."
"I know. I have the same conflicts. Let the intellect rule passion for a while."
Gathrid recognized a rock formation. "You're headed for the surface?"
Ahlert nodded. "We'll have to move fast if we do ally. The Toal up there will know instantly. It'll act. We'll have to be there to stop it."
Gathrid pondered. The Mindak, though harsh, was human. Nieroda was something undead, something come back from the grave to torment the living.
Assuming Ahlert was telling the truth. This talk could be all maneuver . . . . "How can I believe you?"
"A touchy point. You could wait and see. That's always good. But in this case it would be too late by the time you got proof."
"It would," Gathrid agreed.
"I'm strong. Ventimiglia is strong. But our system makes it impossible for me to command the Empire's whole strength. I depend on the support of the Corichs, the organizers of the peasant brigades. They're frightened. Nieroda is a mistress of elder sorceries. Horrors we can't comprehend these days. If you had time to go down and see the past . . . " He seemed to disappear inside himself.
"Yes?"
"What? Oh. I can't win alone. She'd seize control of Ventimiglia. With the Empire and her ancient sorceries she would tear at the world like a wounded tiger. She'd destroy everything."
"You've given this some thought."
"A lot of thought." Ahlert stopped walking. "I'm going to place myself in your power. I'm betting you'll resist temptation long enough to learn the truth." Hands shaking, the Mindak removed the Ordrope Diadem. "Squat down here."
Gathrid was frightened. He had an urge to say he believed, and never mind the truth. Then an imp of suspicion whispered at his ear. Suppose that was what Ahlert was fishing for? He dropped to one knee.
The Mindak accepted the challenge.
The Diadem seemed weightless. A man could forget he wore it.
Gathrid rose. Pale, grim, Ahlert stared at the ruby. His dark eyes glazed. His personality hit Gathrid like a sudden storm. The cold power of it drove the youth back against the cavern wall.
He rolled with the force, released mental channels worn smooth by the Sword's predations. He learned more than he wanted to know. He yanked the Diadem off, thrust it at its owner. To live with that continuously, seeing every man's bleak black deeps . . . . It was too much. Ahlert had an incredible will.
"You saw?" the Mindak demanded.
Gathrid nodded. Ahlert had not lied. His Western army had gone mad. It had to be neutralized.
The impossible had become imperative. His conscience allowed him no choice. He and Daubendiek had to serve Ventimiglia in order that he might serve his own people.
The Toal awaited them beyond the cave mouth. It snapped its lance at the Mindak. Daubendiek leapt into Gathrid's hand, slashed across, altered the weapon's path.
But not enough. Its fiery head grazed the Mindak's left arm. Ahlert roared in pain and anger.
A mob fell on the Toal, raging and tearing like wild dogs, wielding weapons both magical and mundane. Mohrhard Horgrebe, possessed, chopped and slashed, its sword a deadly blur. Its armor turned both blades and sorceries.
Gathrid spared but a glance for the Mindak before wading in.
Ahlert neutralized the lance's wizardry with incantations forced through clenched teeth. He saved himself, but not his arm. In seconds it withered to a dry, useless appendage.
But for Gathrid's quickness he would have died. "Damn me!" he muttered. "And I was expecting it, too."
Feeling a hundred feet tall, Gathrid shoved through the Toal's attackers. He let Daubendiek have its head. The Dead Captain held its ground.
Nevertheless, the match was less even than had been their previous encounter. Gathrid and the Great Sword were melding. In moments Daubendiek slew the Toal's blade. It perished with a great metallic scream. Daubendiek drove in over the lifeless steel.
The Toal felt much as had the one taken in the Savards: cold, evil, and under it all a flicker of despair that was all that remained of Mohrhard Horgrebe, once a champion of wide renown.
A shadow rolled over the canyon. A cold wind whipped dust and leaves up in violent little wind-witches. Mocking laughter made the hills shake.
The thing that had circled above raced toward the west, into a blood-red setting sun. With the flying beast, or in it, went the thing that had possessed the corpse of Mohrhard Horgrebe.
The Mindak seized an enchanted bow and spellbound silver arrow. He sped the shaft after the flyer. His ruined arm betrayed him. The arrow fell to earth less than a mile away.
Nieroda had foreseen the alliance. She had planned for the eventuality. Confirmation was on its way to her.
Gathrid's Toal-haunt gurgled merrily.
"Good show, boy. Good show."
"What the devil?"
Theis Rogala pushed through the crowd. He bowed to Gathrid and the Mindak—then sprang back when he saw the light in Gathrid's eyes.
The youth considered running the dwarf down. Then he shrugged. There would be little point. He went looking for Loida instead.
His feelings had been correct. Rogala had been tailing him.
Chapter Eleven
Senturia
Three days passed before Ahlert recovered sufficiently to travel. Gathrid spent the time with Loida or wandering through the hidden city. He avoided Rogala religiously. He discovered that the hopes of his eastward journey had been but shadows cast by futility. Excepting Belfiglio's Eye, the rich ore of this motherlode had, it seemed, been transferred to the Mindak's palaces at Senturia. In Ansorge he saw only ruins and more ruins.
The Mindak's people showed him where the Toal had been unearthed, in caverns far beneath Ansorge proper. The twelve crypts were incredibly old. When Gathrid viewed the place where Nieroda had slept he fancied he smelled sour evil still.
He returned from the caverns early the third day, after learning that they would be leaving next morning. As he joined Loida he thought he saw someone slipping through the rocks near their slightly separate encampment. "Who was that?"
"Rogala."
"What was he doing here?"
"Talking to Gacioch."
"There's a pair," Gathrid muttered. "Look, I don't want him hanging around."
"Grouch." Loida made a sour face at him. "How did it go down there today?" She had accompanied him once, had found the ruins too spooky for further visits.
"A whole lot of nothing. What they've fo
und is already gone. What they haven't you can't see. The murals and reliefs and stuff don't make much sense."
"Lord Telani told me we're leaving tomorrow."
"I heard. I'm glad. I'm getting restless." He picked up a stick, drew figures in the dust. "Movement becomes an end in itself."
"You can't run away."
"I know. I tried to leave the Sword down there today. It wouldn't let me. When I got fifteen feet away, I started shaking. It hurt. It made me run back and grab it."
"That's spooky."
"That's terrifying. I can't live with it and I can't live without it."
"Don't think about it." She leaned over a small fire and simmering pot. "A soldier gave me a rabbit and some vegetables." She raised the pot lid. Stew smells tantalized Gathrid's nose.
"Smells good."
"Then just think about supper."
"How soon?"
"I don't know. What do I know about cooking? I just did what the man told me."
Exasperated, Gathrid asked, "How long did he say?" He wished she would discourage these soldiers more.
"All right. Another half-hour, I guess."
"I'm going for a walk, then."
What he did was run. Strongly and steadily, as he had not been able since his bout with polio. And as he ran, exhilarating in his ability, he reflected that the Sword was not all bad. It hadn't given him a lot, but had given something important.
And he thought about Loida and how her fears and his nagging depression kept them from communicating about anything that mattered, kept them from getting to know one another. She got along better with Gacioch and the young soldiers who kept buzzing round. She and the demon went on like a brother and sister comedy insult act.
He wished he could reassure the girl. He could not. They both knew their fears were not imaginary.
They would be heading for Ventimiglia's capital tomorrow. Loida would be in great peril there. So might he be, though reason said the Mindak had no excuse for treachery yet.
Near the end of his run he glimpsed the dwarf scrambling through the rocks, following him. He grinned. Served Rogala right, having to bust his tail to stay near the Sword. He upped his pace.
All the disorder, squalor, misery and crowding lacking in the country manors was concentrated in Senturia. Gathrid tapped his memories. He knew the slums well. These Quarters produced the soldiers who fleshed out the brigades. No other career offered such opportunities for the poor.
There was plunder to be had, out on the frontiers. A man who survived a tour with his brigade could buy his way out.
Gathrid searched their dreams, their so-small dreams, marveling at those men, and pitying them.
The Mindak's party passed through the slums. People ignored them. Farther in, Gathrid saw buildings and monuments known to his soldier-souls only by repute. There had been a renaissance during the last century. Senturia's heart had been demolished, then rebuilt as the domain of the wealthy. The poor encircled the rich like ramparts of despair.
The city's center boasted a dozen scattered palacios belonging to Ventimiglia's leading families. Between them lay great plazas, imaginative fountains, reflecting lakes and the somber structures of the colleges and universities where wizardry was taught and knowledge preserved. There was a feral park from which deer peeped out as the riders passed. This district denied that poverty could exist in the Mindak's Empire.
"Look at the pigeons," Loida murmured. "There must be millions of them."
One of Gathrid's spare souls snickered. Pigeons were wards of the Twelve Families. It was a crime to harm them. Even so, poor folk of the Quarters made the birds guests of honor at many a meal.
Ahlert's home proved to be a rambling, interconnected mass of baroque structures covering a dozen acres atop a low hill. A few armed men, flashy in family colors, patrolled a walkway encircling a ten-foot wall. They looked bored. On spying their master they became jaunty and arrogant.
"The House of the Five Fountains," Ahlert told Gathrid. "Don't ask about the name. There're six fountains. Four for fresh water . . . . My ancestors must have had grandiose plans."
"More grandiose plans," Rogala muttered. "He calls it a house. I've seen smaller cities."
"How many people live here?" Gathrid asked. Loida had been imprisoned here. He hadn't believed her stories before.
"It varies. We're at a high point now, what with our western venture. Several thousand."
Gathrid exchanged glances with Loida. The girl looked triumphant.
The quiet seen from outside the house proved to be a mask. The House of the Five Fountains was busy as an ants' nest. Loida said, "Those are the clerks and accountants who keep track of profits and cost out west."
Whole courtyards were filled with western plunder. It was decaying for want of buyers. Gathrid looked for something from Gudermuth. He did not find a thing.
Ahlert told him, "I was too successful. I saturated the market. We quit plundering after we occupied Grevening. We're concentrating on long-term projects now. Mainly colonial ventures."
Gathrid controlled his temper. The reckoning would come. Those who had died to enrich Ahlert would be avenged.
People stared at him. They avoided his eye. They knew him. They were afraid.
The Mindak observed, "Our alliance won't be popular. I don't think they realize what losing control of Nieroda means."
Rogala grumbled, "Those brigades rebelled out of boyish high spirits, eh?"
"Some people take that attitude. They think they'll come around. They can't encompass the noncommercial aspect." Ahlert halted, dismounted, handed his animal to a groom. A platoon of stableboys took the other mounts. "It snuck up on us. We found Ansorge when there were civil wars in Gorsuch and Silhavy. They were weak. We were strong. The wizardries we controlled, augmented from Ansorge, made us think we could enrich the family on the cheap."
"And you became addicted to conquest."
"Not entirely. Greed had more to do with it. The Corichs got excited by all the loot. They wanted more. The great families wanted their share. More powerful and effective weapons were coming out of Ansorge. We found Nieroda and the Toal. It looked like nothing could stop us."
Ahlert led them through long marble hallways filled with bustling clerks. "Then I started changing. A few years ago the title Emperor meant nothing. I took it to heart. I got grand ideas. A world-spanning Empire, at peace. My family mastering its commerce . . . . I hadn't heard of Chuchain or Suchara. I didn't know my delvings in Ansorge were wakening them, or that Chuchain was whispering into my dreams. Sometimes I wish I hadn't found the Hidden City."
They entered a large hall. The houseboys bearing personal effects spread out, heading in several directions. Ahlert sped his guests hither and yon. Loida and Gathrid followed a half-dozen servants. Between them they hadn't enough possessions to burden one. Gathrid still wore the clothing in which he had fled Kacalief. He looked and smelled it, though he had washed when he could. Loida wore the clothing in which she had fled the Mindak's nephews.
She said, "That man doesn't sound like a mad conqueror."
Gathrid replied, "I haven't met anybody who fit his part. Except maybe Gerdes Mulenex. The others are as reluctant as I am."
"What about your sister?"
"I don't know. She was a special case. Maybe she was like Mulenex. She did fit in with what happened to her."
They climbed several flights of stairs. Ahlert's palacio ceased being showy off the level where visitors were welcomed. Their rooms, facing one another across a bare, narrow third-floor hallway, were windowless, small and spartan. A houseboy told Gathrid, "Don't be alarmed, Lord. The Mindak himself sleeps in a room like this." He leaned close, confided, "It's an affectation of the family. Humble beginnings, you know. They want to remind themselves that it isn't a long way from Five Fountains to the Quarters."
"The more I see of him and Ventimiglia, the more confused I get. Every conclusion I draw gets contradicted."
The servant smiled. "We pu
zzle ourselves, Lord."
Gathrid kept the man there. He did not mind wasting the afternoon chatting. Gathrid pumped him about the Mindak and his family.
A dozen generations back, Ahlert's ancestors had been mercenaries. Luck, a talent for politics and sorcery, and a run of steel-willed offspring had built Ventimiglia's most powerful house.
"It's happened a hundred times," the servant averred. "That's why Quarters folk enlist. They all think they can make it if they just win a stake."
