“Is Gaithorn dying?”
“Time will make no difference to her now,” the Warlord replied obliquely. “You won’t need a healer.” She made a slight inclination of her head, a gesture of dismissal. Gorgo could see that Cadi didn’t care for her orders, but she obeyed at once, loping down the hallway.
Once she had disappeared, the Warlord turned to M’Chay. “Our strategem may have been premature. Can we catch your construct?”
“We can try, but it will put you at risk, child.”
The Warlord waved this away impatiently, while Gorgo hid a smile at hearing their leader called “child.” He had not yet figured out what the two of them were talking about, which he was beginning to find irksome. “Let’s go, then,” the Warlord said. “Gorgo, you’re with us.” She took off down the hall at a fast stride, her long legs eating up the distance. Gorgo kept pace with an effort, and the little monk jogged beside him. Gorgo guessed they were heading toward where the Warlord had last seen the golem.
“What construct?” Gorgo asked, deciding he had nothing to lose by inquiring. He was almost surprised when the Warlord answered him.
“After I escaped from the assassin, I sought out M’Chay and had him construct a simulacrum for me.”
M’Chay sighed. “A hasty piece of work, not my best. She gave me only twenty minutes. And it is a difficult and costly process under any circumstances. But the construct should serve.”
“Serve for what?” Gorgo asked.
“To fool the golem,” M’Chay said between panting breaths.
On the point of asking how, the meaning dawned on Gorgo. “You created a simulacrum of the Warlord for the assassin to kill.” M’Chay nodded. Now Gorgo realized the reason for their haste. Once Cockatrice believed the Warlord dead, she would summon Morbid, and the Fence would fall under attack. Now that the Warlord had another means of protection from the assassin, it would be better to keep the golem hunting, and Morbid at bay. But would Cockatrice be fooled by a simulacrum? Gorgo shook his head, remembering the golem’s hound-like senses. “If it doesn’t smell right, it won’t fool Cockatrice.”
“The smell should be exact.” M’Chay had begun to wheeze, and he slowed to a halt, his yellowed skin gone grey. He drew in a deep breath or two. “The construct is made from the blood and hair of the subject; its body is a perfect likeness. It was on the consciousness I had to skimp. The creation has very little mind.” The Warlord had stopped too, assessing M’Chay. The monk shook his head at her. “I’m too old for this, child. You go on without me.”
“No matter.” The Warlord paused, listening. “We are too late.”
Gorgo heard it, too—the sounds of combat from the next hall, the ring of steel.
“Are you invisible to the golem?” the Warlord asked Gorgo.
“Yes. Last I knew, anyway.”
“Then go take a look.”
Gorgo was itching to do just that, and was quick to comply. He slipped around the corner and saw the two giants contending not twenty feet from him, circling and slashing, lunging and parrying. Cockatrice was unwounded, not a mark on the golden warrior. Not even sweat gleamed on her honeyed, metallic skin. She held her long sword in her right hand, her axe in her left, using them both simultaneously and with deadly skill. The other construct indeed looked identical to the Warlord, perfect in every detail, except that its expression was nearly blank. The simulacrum’s axe was a black blur, meeting and repelling the golem’s blades. The two warriors were of a height, seven feet each of hard muscle and murder. They looked like two chess pieces contending, one golden, one ebony.
As Gorgo watched, the false Warlord dived away from the golem’s sword, rolling across the floor and spinning back on one knee to meet the golem’s attack. Her axe whirred before her like a wall of steel. Cockatrice leaped at her, weapons singing. It occurred to Gorgo that the creatures were, in a sense, cousins: just as the golem had been fashioned by descendants of Greycowl monks, the simulacrum had been made by M’Chay, himself a scion of the mountain monasteries. They were both monkish constructs.
He became aware that M’Chay had joined him. A moment later he heard the Warlord’s tread, and wondered what she was thinking, exposing herself to the golem’s view. He glanced around at her, frowning. She met his look and grinned back. “I tried the incantation you suggested. It seems effective.”
M’Chay tsked, and Gorgo felt like doing the same. Would it be bad form to scold his leader for recklessness? He kept his mouth shut. He supposed M’Chay had used the incantation of invisibility too, but the risk was less for him. Gorgo glanced back at the fight, but could not judge who was winning. He looked at the Warlord again, and found her watching the battle with what he deemed to be professional interest. “The fighting skills also leave something to be desired, M’Chay,” she murmured to the monk.
The clash of steel turned to a squeal; Gorgo wheeled in time to see the golem sweep the simulacrum’s axe aside with her own, sparks flashing from the meeting of metal, and bury her sword in the construct’s breast. The simulacrum grunted, still breathing, laboring to bring its axe back around. Its muscles seemed to be failing. Cockatrice was faster; she swept her axe in a great arc and sent the simulacrum’s head spinning. Silence fell in the corridor.
Cockatrice sheathed her weapons. The polished bronze of her breastplate was spattered with the simulacrum’s blood, the drops of it like rust on her gleaming form. The simulacrum had nicked Cockatrice; a gash showed on the golem’s cheekbone, and a droplet of golden ichor tracked down her face, gleaming like a jewel. It was like watching a statue bleed, Gorgo thought. Expressionless, Cockatrice tossed a glowing ruby crystal to the floor, and ground it into powder under her boot heel. She picked up the false Warlord’s head, fingers lacing through its hair, and strode off down the hall, brushing by Gorgo, M’Chay, and the Warlord without a glance.
Gorgo gazed after the golem, wondering. If the Warlord had merely stayed out of sight, without using the Kahlrite incantation, would Cockatrice have believed her dead? Gorgo could not be sure, but he thought not. Cockatrice seemed able to sense her prey by magic even when they were not near her, as shown by the way she had tracked Angel Eyes’ henchmen. The incantation, however, appeared to blind all her senses, as though her prey no longer existed.
Gorgo turned back to study the Warlord. Her eyes were distant. Gorgo could imagine what she was thinking. They had just unleashed Morbid. The Kharvay would soon be storming the Fence, and she had the powers of the assassin at her control—the powers that had left Madness in ruins. Their ruse might have averted the assassination, but it had invited the revolution. Gorgo’s gut tightened. This would not be pretty, and they had no way to stop it.
The Warlord looked at M’Chay and smiled, a long ripple like a wolf’s smile. “We are now committed to this course. But I like the play. Morbid wants my head. I see many advantages in giving her what she wants.”
M’Chay smiled back like a tiny brown cherub. “Admirable. You are following then the philosophy of Ser’Tchin?”
“The monk who believed in giving people enough rope to hang themselves? A thinker I’ve always admired.”
“A crudely put distortion, child. Ser’Tchin preached the doctrine of non-interference in others’ actions.”
“A cover,” the Warlord said thoughtfully. “He would have made an excellent and subtle dictator. But time does not permit one of your tea-time disputes, M’Chay. We must move swiftly if we’d not have Morbid at the reins.” The Warlord turned to Gorgo, and Gorgo felt the weight of her gaze like a physical thing. “Tell me how Morbid controls the golem.”
Of course the Warlord would want to know that; it was the weak link in Morbid’s plot. Strip Morbid of the golem, and she would become no threat. Gorgo had been pursuing the same line of reasoning for the last three days. But he had gotten nowhere. “Morbid commands it through an incantation. I heard her use it once. The catch is that the incantation only affects Cockatrice after she’s completed her current orders. Until
then she can’t be turned aside.”
“No way at all to turn her?” The Warlord’s eyes gleamed on him as if she suspected this was a half-truth.
How had she spotted his equivocation? Gorgo swallowed his annoyance. “Supposedly there is a word which calls off the assassin. I learned it, but the woman who told it to me placed a spell of forgetting on the word. I can’t get at it.” He wished he could escape the Warlord’s gaze. He had spent his life avoiding all affairs of the police and the Fence, like any sensible Wyvernyr, and now like a fool he had brought himself directly under the scrutiny of the Fence’s most powerful member. He yearned to disappear, to fade back into anonymity. He slipped his hand into his pocket to get some comfort from Honeylegs, and found it empty. His stomach lurched coldly. When had he lost Honeylegs? The spider had been his one asset.
“Who told you the word? Was it Morbid?”
“No, it was—ah—a Panam Kell who was inhabiting the body of a Tiger.”
If the Warlord found this bizarre she gave no sign. Her eyes were alight with interest. “Does Morbid know this word?”
“No—that I can swear to.”
“If the Panam Kell bothered to hide it under a spell, it must have some value. We’ll see to this.” The Warlord turned to M’Chay. “Our paths must part here. Gorgo and I need to move swiftly.”
M’Chay nodded. “As you like, child. Where would you have me?”
“Take the lad to the Tea House, will you? Stay there until I come for you.”
“Of course.” M’Chay padded away down the hall.
The lad? Gorgo puzzled on this for a moment. Then he recalled that the Warlord had a son, and wondered if she had just sent M’Chay to take the boy to safety.
The Warlord turned back to him. “Now Gorgo, tell me the incantation that controls the golem.”
Or she had sent M’Chay away so he would not hear the incantation. Gorgo wondered which motive had predominated. He cast back in his mind to Morbid’s headquarters, and the sound of her voice commanding Cockatrice. He had memorized her words at the time, and hoped he had them right. “As near as I can remember: Ist balaat un scortaslaat, va keen; ist mogtruna un vreel, va gorn; ist shasha un ohst, va fesch; ist nawthus un krif, va deem: Bakoshkry Oxfeen.”
“I would say your memory is sound. Those are Kahlrite words.”
Devourer, how would she know the Kahlrite holy language? Gorgo was still pondering this when the Warlord gestured down the hall. “Now we must go.”
Gorgo turned, and a flash of movement near the floor caught his eye. Something writhed along the base of the wall, a glistening, translucent ribbon. It was slithering straight for the Warlord’s feet. It reared back, and Gorgo saw fangs like chips of diamond, a hood flared back from a pointed head. “Ware the snake!” Gorgo called, but the Warlord had already seen it, had leapt back and raised her axe.
A hairy golden ball hurtled down on the snake from the ceiling. Honeylegs landed just behind its hood and plunged her tiny fangs into it. She gripped it fast in her pedipalps as the snake thrashed beneath her. In moments the serpent’s struggles slowed. It flopped to the floor and lay still, a strand of diamond on the stones.
Honeylegs scurried to Gorgo’s feet and danced up his leg. He scooped her quickly into his pocket, afraid of the Warlord’s questions. He was not sure the goods sold in the Hunger Market were strictly legal.
The Warlord was not looking at him. She knelt by the corpse, turning it over with the edge of her axe. The serpent was three feet long, its body as clear and glittering as a fine frost. She rose and turned back to Gorgo. “You’ve been shopping at the Hunger Market, I see.”
Hell. “How did you know?”
“That spider is one of the monks’ breeds. The Hunger Market is the only place outside of the monastery where you’ll find one, and it’s rare even there. They treasure their spiders too much to sell them often.” The Warlord grinned, a predator’s toothy smile. “I saw her creep from your pocket not a minute past. I wondered what she was hunting.”
This information raised more questions than answers, but Gorgo put them aside for more pressing concerns. “Cockatrice can create snakes from her flesh. I think this came from her.”
“Undoubtedly. Now we must go.” She grabbed his arm and took two steps. On the second, the world around them dissolved into grainy fog, and then hardened again into a maze of mirrored corridors that was all too familiar to Gorgo. He hid his startlement. Yahsta’s balls, it seemed the Warlord could duck into the Fence of Mirrors at will. This must be how she had escaped the assassin, the route that Cockatrice could not take. Gorgo resigned himself to this new encounter with the Fence wards. Apparently being in the Warlord’s company was little different than being with the golem, he reflected wryly: in either case he was asked a lot of questions and dragged about from place to place without explanation.
The Warlord’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “When did you cross the Fence wards?” she asked, as casually as she had asked everything else.
“Not an hour past,” Gorgo said, and bit his lip. There seemed no point in denying it, but he would rather she not know he had snuck in. He wondered how she had guessed. Perhaps simply the lack of a Fence stamp on his hand. If he had come in legitimately, he probably wouldn’t be in a borrowed uniform, either.
She strode through the maze, keeping hold of Gorgo’s arm. In a few paces, the reflections about them shivered and changed. The labyrinth had altered. The Warlord pivoted to the right without slackening her pace. No doubt they were walking down a new-formed corridor now. How had the Warlord known where the new passage opened, without feeling the walls? Five more paces, and the mirrors shifted again. This time Gorgo felt the slight change in the air on his left, a little puff against his face from the new-formed passage, and was not surprised when the Warlord turned that way.
Their next step brought them out of the mirror maze onto a deserted street, and the Warlord released his arm. It was full morning now; the sun hung well over the horizon. Gorgo gazed at it, eyes narrowed, wondering how close Morbid was to storming the Fence. How much time did they have?
13: At the Gate
One of the Margays, on patrol in the upper levels, found the Warlord’s headless body. He drew his sword and whistled for his comrades, raising the alarm. Within five minutes a full squadron was searching the halls and rooms for any trace of the assassin. They found Cadi standing guard at Gaithorn’s door. The sorceress stood nearby, but she would never move again. She had been turned to stone.
Cadi would offer no explanation at first, until she heard the Warlord was dead. Then her face set, and she coolly related what she knew of the Assassin of the Kahlrites. “Sent by Morbid,” she said, and her mouth snapped shut.
The story flew through Mort Glave. The Hands of the Warlord, on duty in the Throne Room, took the news calmly. He gave brusque orders and dispatched pages and Margays in a dozen directions, some to summon the five Fence lords to the council chamber, some to take word to the Margays on guard at the district gates. Before the messengers could have gotten even halfway there, a Margay sprinted into the Throne Room, breathing hard. He slid to a stop and hastily saluted the Hands, hand to his heart.
“Morbid is outside the gate on Serpent Street, leading eighteen young Kharvay warriors with drawn swords. She demands entry as the rightful ruler of Wyverna.”
The Hands remained expressionless. The little stars swam untroubled in the depths of his cold eyes. “I shall attend her.”
The Hands strode from the room, summoning no guards to him. Nonetheless a squad of a dozen Margays had fallen in behind him by the time he stepped from the door of Mort Glave. They were grim-faced and silent, their eyes narrowed, their knuckles white on their sword hilts. Resplendent in their black and silver uniforms, they swept along the streets like a swath of night sky.
Heads poked from windows to watch. Merchants came out onto their porches. Passersby stopped to stare. The crowd eddied, its voice somber and low, questioning. Before
the Hands reached the gate, word spread through the throng—the Warlord was dead. The group’s murmur turned to a growl. Some reached for swords. Others paled. The wail of a young boy pierced through the babble, then his voice sank to low sobs.
The Hands ignored the crowd. He reached the gate; it stood closed, a twelve-foot high wall of iron. On the inside, steps led up to the top. Normally two Margays guarded each gate, but now more than a dozen black-and-silver figures patrolled the top or swarmed around the bottom. The Hands jogged up the steps to join them. Morbid stood just before the gate, her head high, her rapier sheathed. The young Kharvays who milled about her, most of them sailors by the look of them, seemed nervous and excited.
Morbid’s lip curled at sight of the Hands. “Open to me, servant of the Warlord. The Warlord is dead, and I am your new master.” Her voice rang over the crowd inside.
“I think not,” the Hands said. “I shall have you arrested for treason.”
Morbid laughed. In the Fence District, the crowd’s mutter turned ugly. “Show yourself, Cockatrice,” Morbid called.
The golem materialized from the empty air just inside the gate, seven feet of glistening bronze and copper. In her left hand she held a severed head. She raised it high so the crowd could see the Warlord’s face. Silence fell over the throng, broken only by a child’s whimpers. Cockatrice stepped toward the gate.
Steel rang as every Margay drew their swords. The nearest guards leaped at her, weapons whistling. The golem did not move save to turn her head. Her bronze eyes sparkled with gold light, her gaze sweeping across the soldiers. Every person her gaze touched turned to dark grey stone. Their ranks stilled, like a field of flowers caught in a sudden frost. Cockatrice swept her glowing eyes up the gate. The Margays turned into statues even as they bounded down to reach her. Her eyes stopped on the Hands, and their light went out.
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