“Yes, I would,” said King Luther. He leaned forward and gripped the table with powerful blue-knuckled hands. “My kingdom is being ravaged,” he said. “I have been selected as Evil King fifteen times in the last twenty years, with the result that I have a tour through there once a week, invading my court and trying to kill me or my courtiers. My wife has left me and taken the children with her for safety. The towns and countryside are being devastated. If the army of the Dark Lord doesn’t march through and sack my city, then the Forces of Good do it next time. I admit I’m being paid quite well for this, but the money I earn is so urgently needed to repair the capital for the next Pilgrim Party that there is almost none to spare for helping the farmers. They hardly grow anything these days. You must be aware, High Chancellor—”
Querida’s hand went to the next pile, which was of paper, in various shapes and sizes. “I am aware, thank you, Your Majesty. These letters are a selection of those I get from farmers and ordinary citizens. They all state that what with magical weather conditions, armies marching over crops, soldiers rustling cattle, fires set by the Dark Lord’s minions, and other hazards, they are likely to starve for the foreseeable future.” She picked up another smallish pile of paper. “Almost the only people who seem to be prospering are the innkeepers, and they complain that the lack of barley is making it hard to brew sufficient ale.”
“My heart bleeds,” King Luther said sourly. “Where would we be if a Pilgrim Party arrived at an inn with no beer?”
“Mr. Chesney would not be pleased,” murmured a high priest. “May the gods defend us, Anscher preserve us from that!”
“Chesney’s only a man,” muttered the delegate from the Thieves Guild.
“Don’t let him hear you say that!” Barnabas said warningly.
“Of course he’s only a man,” snapped Querida. “He just happens to be the most powerful man in the world, and I’ve taken steps to ensure that he cannot hear us inside this council chamber. Now may I go on? Thank you. We are being pressured to find a solution by several bodies. Here”—she picked up a large and beautifully lettered parchment with paintings in the margins—“is an ultimatum from Bardic College. They say that Mr. Chesney and his agents appear to regard all bards with the tours as expendable. Rather than lose any more promising musicians, they say here, they are refusing to take part in any tours this year, unless we can guarantee the safety of—”
“But we can’t!” protested a wizard two places down from Barnabas.
“True,” said Querida. “I fear the bards are going to have to explain themselves to Mr. Chesney. I also have here similar but more moderate letters from the seers and the healers. The seers complain that they have to foresee imaginary events and that this is against the articles of their guild, and the healers, like the wizards, complain of chronic overwork. At least they only threaten not to work this year. And here”—she lifted up a small ragged pile of paper—“here are letters from the mercenary captains. Most of them say that replacements to manpower, equipment, and armor cost them more than the fees they earn from the Pilgim Parties, and this one on top from—Black Gauntlet, I think the man’s name is—also very feelingly remarks that he wants to retire to a farm, but he has not in twenty years earned enough for one coo—”
“One what?” said King Luther.
“Cow. He can’t spell,” said Barnabas.
“—even if there were any farms where he would be safe from the tours,” said Querida. She shuffled more papers, saying as she shuffled, “Pathetic letters from nuns, monks, werewolves. Where are—? Oh, yes, here.” She picked up a white sheet that glowed faintly and a large pearly slice of what seemed to be shell, covered with faint marks. “Probably one of their old scales,” she remarked. “These are protests from the elves and the dragons.”
“What have they got to complain of?” another wizard asked irritably.
“Both put it rather obscurely,” Querida confessed. “I think the Elfking is talking about blackmail and the dragons seem to be bewailing the shrinking of their hoards of treasure, but both of them seem to be talking about their birthrate, too, so one cannot be sure. You can all read them in a short while, if you wish, along with any other letters you want. For now, have I made my point?” Her pouchy eyes darted to look at everyone around the long table. “I have asked everyone I can think of to tell me how the tours affect them. I have received over a million replies. My study is overflowing with them, and I invite you all to go and inspect it. What I have here are only the most important. And the important thing is that they all, in different ways, say the same thing. They want an end to Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties.”
“And have you thought of a way to stop them?” Barnabas asked eagerly.
“No,” said Querida. “There is no way.”
“What?” shouted almost everyone around the table.
“There is no way,” Querida repeated, “that I can think of. Perhaps I should remind you that Mr. Chesney’s decisions are supported by an extremely powerful demon. All the signs are that he made a pact with it when he first started the tours.”
“Yes, but that was forty years ago,” objected the young Emperor of the South. “Some of us weren’t born then. Why should I have to keep on doing what that demon made my grandfather do?”
“Don’t be foolish,” Querida snapped. “Demons are immortal.”
“But Mr. Chesney isn’t,” argued the young Emperor.
“Possibly he isn’t, but I’ve heard he has children being groomed to take over after him,” Barnabas said sadly.
Querida’s eyes darted to the Emperor in venomous warning. “Don’t speak like that outside this room. Mr. Chesney does not like to hear anyone being less than enthusiastic about his Pilgrims, and we do not mention the demon. Have I made myself plain?” The young Emperor swallowed and sat back. “Good,” said Querida. “Now, to business. The tour agents have been in this world for over a month, and the arrangements for this year’s tours are almost complete. Mr. Chesney is due here himself tomorrow to give the Dark Lord and the Wizard Guides their final briefings. The purpose of this meeting is supposed to be to appoint this year’s Dark Lord.”
Heavy sighs ran around the table. “All right,” said one of the wizards, out of the general dejection. “Who is it to be? Not me. I did it last year.”
Querida gave her sour little smile, folded her hands, and sat back. “I have no idea,” she said blandly. “I have no more idea who is to be Dark Lord than I have about how to stop the tours. I propose that we consult the Oracles.”
There was a long, thoughtful silence. Relieved shiftings began around the table as even the slowest of the people there realized that Querida was, after all, trying to find a way out. At last the high priest said dubiously, “Madam Chancellor, I understood that the Oracles were set up for Mr. Chesney by wizards of the University—”
“And by a former high priest, who asked the gods to speak through the Oracles,” Querida agreed. “Is that any reason why they shouldn’t work, Reverend Umru?”
“Well,” said the high priest. “Er. Mightn’t the Oracles, in that case, be … well … biased?”
“Probably,” said Querida. “For that reason, I propose to ask both the White Oracle and the Black Oracle. They will say two different things, and we will do them both.”
“Er,” said High Priest Umru. “Two Dark Lords?”
“If necessary,” said Querida. “Anything it takes.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. Because she was so small, this kept her head at exactly the same height. Her small, lizardlike chin jutted as she looked around the table. “We can’t all go to the Oracles,” she said, “and some of you look far too tired. I shall take a representative body. King Luther, I think, and Barnabas, you come. And you, High Priest Umru—”
Umru stood up and bowed, with his hands clasped across his large belly. “Madam Chancellor, I would hate to be selected on false pretenses. I am probably one of the few people here who does not object to the Pilgrim Parties.
My temple has prospered exceedingly out of them over the years.”
“I know,” said Querida. “You people keep taking me for a fool. I want you as a representative of the other point of view, of course. And I’ll take you, too, for the same reason.” Her hand darted out like a snake’s tongue to point at the delegate from the Thieves Guild.
He was a young man, thin and fair and clever-looking. He was extremely surprised. “Me?” he said. “Are you sure?”
“What a silly question,” Querida said. “Your guild must have made a mint from the Pilgrims, one way and another.”
A strange expression crossed the face of the thief, but he got up without a word. His clothing was as rich as that of the high priest. His long silk sleeves swirled as he walked gracefully around the table. “Aren’t the Oracles in the Distant Desert?” he asked. “How do we go?”
“By a translocation spell I have already set up,” Querida said. “Come over here, the four of you.” She led the way to the empty part of the room, where one of the large flagstones in the floor could be seen to have faint marks around its edges. “The rest of you can start reading those letters while we’re away,” she said. “And I’ll need a name for you,” she told the young thief.
“Oh … Regin,” he said.
“Stand here,” Querida said, pushing him to one corner of the flagstone. She pushed King Luther, Barnabas, and High Priest Umru to each of the other corners and slithered between Umru and King Luther to stand in the center of the stone herself. From the point of view of the people still sitting at the table, she vanished entirely behind Umru’s belly. Then, quietly and without warning, all five of them vanished and the flagstone was bare.
From the point of view of the four people with Querida, it was like suddenly stepping into an oven—an oven that was probably on fire, King Luther thought, shielding his eyes with his stout woolen sleeve. Sweat ran out from under Barnabas’s curls. Umru gasped and staggered and then tried wretchedly to get sand out of his embroidered slippers and loosen his vestments at the same time.
Only Querida was perfectly happy. She said, “Ah!” and stretched, turning her face up to the raging sun with a blissful smile. Her eyes, the young thief noticed, were wide open and looking straight into the sun. Wizards! he thought. He was as uncomfortable as the other three, but he had been trained to seem cool and keep his wits about him. He looked around. The Oracles were only a few yards away. They were two small domed buildings, the one on the left so black that it looked like a hole in the universe, and the one on the right so dazzlingly white that sweat ran stinging into his eyes and he had to look away from it.
While they waited for the other three to recover, Querida took Regin’s arm and pulled him across the sand, toward the white building. “Why did you look so oddly when I said your guild must have made a mint from the tours?” she hissed up at him. “Does that mean you want the tours stopped, too?”
Trust her to notice! the thief thought ruefully. “Not exactly, Madam Chancellor. But if you think about it, you’ll see that after forty years we haven’t got much else to steal. We’re debating stealing from one another, and even if we did, there’s nothing much left to spend what we steal on. Actually, I was sent to ask whether it was permissible to steal from the Pilgrims.”
“Don’t you steal from tourists?” Querida asked. When he shook his head, another blissful grin spread over Querida’s little lizard face. “Do you know, I believe that must be one thing that Mr. Chesney forgot to put in his rules. By all means, start stealing from tourists.” Her face darted around toward Umru, who was now mopping his head with his embroidered cope. “Come along, man! Don’t just stand there! Come along, all of you, before you fry. We’ll begin with the White Oracle.”
She led the way to the white building. Regin followed, stepping lightly in his soft boots, although sweat trickled past his ears. King Luther and Barnabas trudged glumly after them. Umru floundered behind and had some trouble fitting through the narrow white doorway.
Inside, it was dark and beautifully cool. They stood in a row looking into a complete darkness that seemed to take up much more space than such a small building could hold.
“What do we do?” King Luther asked.
“Wait,” said Querida. “Watch.”
They waited. After a while, as happens when you stare into total darkness, they all thought they could see dots, blobs, and twirling patterns. Sun dazzle, King Luther thought. Trick of the eyeballs, Regin thought. Take no notice. Means nothing.
All at once the seeming dazzles gathered purposefully together. It was impossible to think they meant nothing. In a second or so they definitely formed the shape of something that might have been human, though swirling and too tall, composed of dim reds and sullen blues and small flashes of green. A soft, hollow voice, with a lot of echoes behind it, said, Speak your question, mortals.
“Thank you,” Querida said briskly. “Our question is this: What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr. Chesney for good?”
The swirling shape dived, mounted to something twenty feet high, and then shrank to something Querida’s size, weaving this way and that. It seemed agitated. But the hollow voice, when it spoke, was the same as before: You must appoint as Dark Lord the first person you see on leaving here.
“Much obliged,” said Querida.
Quite suddenly the little temple was not dark at all. It was a very small space, hardly big enough for the five of them, with bare white walls and a floor of drifted sand in which bits of rubbish could be seen, evidently dropped by other people who had been to consult the White Oracle. There were scraps of paper, a small shoe, buckles, straps, and plum stones. Something flashed, half buried in the sand by the toes of Regin’s boots. While everyone was turning to go out, he stooped and picked it deftly up and then paused in surprise with the rest of them, because the doorway was no longer narrow. It was now wide enough for all five of them to walk out side by side. They stepped forward into the heat again, blinking at empty miles of glaring desert.
“No one here,” said Querida.
“I suppose it’ll be the first person we see when we get back then,” Barnabas said.
Regin looked at what he had picked up. It was a strip of cloth. There were black letters printed on it that read: Be careful what you ask for; you may get it. He passed it silently to King Luther, who was nearest.
“Now it warns us!” said King Luther, and passed it to Umru.
“This is something I often tell my flock,” Umru said.
“Wizards know it, too,” Barnabas said. He took the cloth and passed it to Querida. “We’ve been warned, Querida. Do you still want to consult the Black Oracle as well?”
“Of course I do. And I am always very careful what I ask for,” Querida retorted. She led the way across the short distance to the black temple. The others looked at one another, shrugged, and followed.
The black building breathed out cold from its surface. Umru sighed with relief as he came under its walls, but his teeth were actually chattering slightly by the time it was his turn to squeeze through the narrow entrance. Inside, he moaned miserably, because it was as hot in there as the desert outside. He stood puffing and panting in deep darkness while, just as before, dazzles and blobs gathered in front of their eyes.
We wait for them to gather, Regin thought wisely. But this time, instead of gathering, the twirling dazzles retreated, swirling away to the sides and glowing more and more strongly. It took all the watchers a full minute to realize that the darkness left behind was now the shape of a huge nearly human figure.
“Oh, I see!” muttered Querida.
You do? said a great, hollow voice. It was deep as a coal mine. Then ask.
“Thank you,” said Querida, and just as before, she asked, “What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr. Chesney for good?”
There was a long, long silence. The darkness remained absolutely still while the silence lasted and then abruptly quivered and broke up,
with shoots of light rushing through it from either side. When it spoke again, the deep voice shook a little.
You must appoint as Wizard Guide to the last tour the second person you see on leaving here.
Then, as in the white temple, the space was small and empty and they were crowded together, standing among rubbish. It was slightly less hot.
“I swear that thing was laughing!” Barnabas said as they turned to go and found, as before, that the doorway was now wide enough to take all of them.
Something glittered in the sand by Regin’s boot. This time he did not pick it up. He put his toe under it and nudged it until he could see that it was a scrap of paper with one gold edge. Sure enough, it had written on it: Be careful what you ask for; you may get it. He decided not to mention it to the others.
“Well, the desert’s still empty,” said King Luther. “Oh!”
A man was just coming out of the temple of the White Oracle. He was a tall, fattish, mildfaced man, dressed in the kind of clothes farmers wore. He was edging sideways out of the narrow entrance with one arm up to shade his eyes, but they could all see his face quite clearly.
Barnabas said, “Oh, no!” and King Luther said, “I’ll be damned!” Umru shook his head. “Be careful what you ask for,” he sighed. Querida drew in a little hiss of breath.
“What’s the matter?” asked Regin. “Who is he? Who are they, I mean?” he added as someone else squeezed out of the white doorway behind the wide man. This person was a boy of about fourteen who looked rather like the man, except that he was skinny where the man was wide. As Regin asked, the man rounded on the boy.
“There,” he said. “You’re answered. Satisfied?”
“No, I am not!” said the boy. “I’ve never heard of this person. Who is he?”
“Goodness knows,” replied the man. “But he’s no one at the University, so it’s quite clear you’re not going to the University to learn your wizardry, anyway. I was right.”
The boy’s chin bunched angrily. “There’s no need to look so pleased. You always try to stop me doing what I want!”
The Merlin Conspiracy Page 40
