“Beloved vassals and liegemen! We thank you for joining us on this night of destiny, which will never be forgotten so long as our nation endures. At long last it is time for the great injustice to be righted. With your help, and that of the forces you have assembled, we will pull down our usurping brother Denombo and take our rightful place upon the imperial throne of Sobrania. Later, after we have savored this first victory, we will personally lead our imperial armada into the Southern Seas, for the purpose of restoring to the empire those other lands once ruled by our ancestor, the first Naelore of glorious memory.”
“Hail, victorious Empress Naelore!” The nine lords smote their steel gauntlets against their breastplates. “Hail, Naelore the Mighty! Hail, Naelore the Conqueror!”
They would have kept up the cheers and martial shouts, except that Orogastus suddenly lifted his hand, whereupon every voice was abruptly stilled. The barbarian lords were like men turned to stone, unable to move a muscle.
“The celebration can come later,” said the sorcerer dryly. “Which one of you owns the great trireme lying in the harbor?”
Another gesture by Orogastus restored the Sobranians to normal mobility. They were both discomfited and frightened by the sorcerer’s casual exertion of power, but none dared to complain. Naelore herself seemed unconcerned. She rested her hand on the forearm of a man who wore a great curled mustache and armor decorated with blue enamel, one of those who had held her red-feathered cape.
“Star Master,” said she, “this is the Sealord Dasinzin, our loyal ally and dear friend of our youth. It is his vessel that has brought us the matériel so vital to our great enterprise.”
Dasinzin cleared his throat and glowered. His fingers strayed to the hilt of his sheathed sword. “So you are the great wizard who has promised to restore our Empress.”
Orogastus only smiled.
“Will you condescend to discuss your strategy with us?” Dasinzin inquired with dangerous civility. “Or do you intend for us to follow your corps of conjurers on blind faith?”
Orogastus seemed not to have heard the insult. “Sealord, did you order your galley’s crew to bring the sealed crates ashore?”
“We should have them here at my house within the hour. I was told by your advance men that the cargo must be unloaded and transported surreptitiously, a few boxes at a time.”
“And your chieftains and their lieutenants?” the sorcerer went on. “Are they also close at hand?”
“They are assembled in the back garden, awaiting their orders.”
The sorcerer nodded in satisfaction. “Very well. I will confer with them anon. I have seen the warriors waiting out on the streets. How large a fighting force were you able to raise?”
“Over four thousand. All of them wear similar disguises, as Her Imperial Majesty commanded, and all are well armed. Even so, we cannot hope to overcome the Imperial Guard unless—”
“Unless powerful magic assists us,” Orogastus said softly. “And it will.”
Another nobleman, tall and florid in countenance, spoke out. “We have done all that was asked of us, even though we knew nothing of the battle plan, because of our devotion to the Empress. But the time has now come for you to confide in us, wizard. Before we proceed further, you must outline your strategy and demonstrate to us the offensive capability of your Star Guild weapons.”
Naelore herself answered him. “Do not be troubled, Lucaibo. Just as soon as the cargo from Dasinzin’s ship is delivered here, you will see with your own eyes what manner of wondrous armament we have assembled. What is more, you will wield a magic weapon yourself—and so will the rest of you lords, and as many of our troops as we can equip.”
The Sobranian men all began to talk excitedly, but subsided when Naelore lifted her hand. “Friends,” she said, “hold your peace for just a few moments longer. Let us go into Dasinzin’s house and the Star Master will tell you everything.”
There was a rumble of approval from the nobles. Dasinzin bowed to the Archduchess, then offered his arm to lead the way inside.
Anigel still sat demurely on Naelore’s fronial, eyes lowered and cross-bound wrists resting on the saddle’s cantle. The lackey who held the beast addressed the sorcerer diffidently:
“My Lord, what of this prisoner?”
Orogastus studied Anigel for a moment. Then he commanded that she be taken to the lady of the house and given bodily ease and refreshment. “Tell your mistress that the Star Master commands her to guard this woman as though her very life depended upon it. For in truth, it does.”
As he came closer and closer to the Brandoba pleasance, Prince Tolivar discovered that invisibility was a futile ploy in a dense crowd, just as it had been out in the foggy river forest. Unable, perhaps because of the distracting pandemonium, to move people harmlessly aside by means of magic, he had to resort to pushing and shoving just like everyone else. The “empty” space occupied by his unseen but substantial form was perilously conspicuous, so he climbed up into one of the decorated trees that lined the street, and when he was concealed from the surging throng below by the foliage, he became visible once again.
“Talisman,” he said, “I need a bird costume. Nothing fancy. Get me one like that fellow over there is wearing.” He pointed to an adolescent garbed in a simple cape and beaked hood of brown feathers, and simultaneously imagined himself wearing the outfit.
And he was. The bag containing the star-box was still tied to his back, but his talismanic coronet was hidden beneath the costume’s headpiece. Well satisfied, he climbed down from the tree and resumed his journey.
He had not expected Brandoba to be so big, or so rich. The people were barbarians, after all, having a fierce suspicion of outsiders and an invincible belief in their own superiority and self-sufficiency. Sobrania and its allied tribes had no universities, no literature, no traditions of fine art or classical music. They kept human slaves, oppressed the local Folk, and indulged in loathsome blood sports. Only their feather crafts were unique enough to be traded abroad; the rest of their commerce with the more civilized nations to the east was based upon the sale of raw materials and certain spices. Sobranian “culture” was sneered at by their civilized neighbors as being a hodgepodge of borrowings: music and drama from Var, arts and architecture from Galanar and the republics, extravagant couture and jewelry-making from Zinora. The empire had imitated the shipbuilding technology of Raktum and Engi, and appropriated weapon-making and other military science from Labornok.
On the other hand, Prince Tolivar thought, looking at the shining buildings and the mostly well-dressed citizenry around him, the Sobranians of Brandoba, at least, hadn’t done badly for themselves at all. Neither had Orogastus, in choosing the prosperous barbarian capital for his initial exploit in the conquest of the world.
And the sorcerer had offered to share it with him …
Tolivar wondered if he had been a fool to reject it. Was there a chance that Orogastus would permit him to change his mind? He touched the hidden coronet and thought for a moment of posing the question; but then the memory of his mother flashed into his mind, standing calm and indomitable before Naelore’s sword, and he lowered his treacherous hand and pressed on toward the city center.
When he reached the pleasance at long last, it lacked only a half hour until midnight. Once again the Prince climbed up into a tall tree, this time in order to get the lay of the land. Below stretched a sea of people filling an immense rectangular space dotted here and there with patches of ornamental trees. The area was encompassed on three sides by boulevards, which were kept open for the carriages and mounts of nobility and other privileged citizens by cordons of imperial warriors armed with stout wooden quarterstaves. The boulevards were backed by rows of elaborately decorated public buildings and large dwellings, protected from the churning throng by walls of stone.
At the eastern end of the pleasance lay the imperial palace. It was a sprawling structure, illuminated externally by countless fire-pots, its architecture a blend o
f efficient fortification and eye-popping vulgarity. The main façade was of white marble and scarlet jasper, with lofty spiraled columns of green malachite. Piled around the colonnaded central structure were crenellated towers and innumerable wings, all connected by arcades and buttresses. Every angle of the vast roof dripped with gargoyles and they, like the rooftiles, were gilded, as was the great rotunda of the inner keep. Thrusting up from the gleaming dome was a red jasper pinnacle topped by a golden bird with wings outspread. The entire confection was tricked out with multicolored enameled shields, painted friezes, fancifully carved moldings, and niches holding statues. There were hundreds of casement windows with gilded frames, all blazing with candlelight.
The palace grounds were enclosed by a thick wall seven ells high, topped with ornamental spikes, fire-baskets, and flagpoles flying festive banners of green and gold. Gilded iron gates, locked and patrolled by warriors in handsome parade armor, fronted the grand staircase leading to the palace’s vestibule of entrance. Flanking the gate were twin stone guardhouses adorned with bunting, and before it stretched a broad forecourt hemmed by more troops.
At the pleasance’s far western end, where Tolivar perched in his tree, stood a bandshell (from which the Imperial Brass boomed out rousing Okamisi and Varonian pop tunes), a glass conservatory housing rare birds, and a shrine to the national goddess, Matuta. The curved section of the Western Boulevard fronting the holy building, roped off and surrounded by guards with pikes and naked swords, held the pyrotechnic materials that would soon be ignited for the fireworks display.
Tolivar touched his coronet and whispered, “Show me the Golden Griss Fountain, where I am to meet Orogastus.”
A voice in his mind said: There. And at the same time his mind’s eyes perceived something glowing amidst the crowd near the far end of the vast open area, situated between two of the miniature parks. It was a tall jet of water rising from the middle of an ornamental basin. Gold-leafed statues of waterbirds spouting lesser streams of water surrounded it, and the rising wind scattered the fountain’s spray in a manner that kept most of the crowd away from its farther side, which was adjacent to the palace forecourt. Unusual numbers of those who braved the wet area wore blackbird costumes.
“That is where the sorcerer will be,” the Prince said to himself. He dismissed the vision, climbed down from the tree, and began moving as quickly as he could out into the pleasance. He took advantage of his small stature to worm through the mob, ignoring cries and curses as he cleared the way with outthrust elbows, stepped ruthlessly on people’s feet, and kicked their shins.
“Ow!” an infuriated male voice sang out. “You damned brat! I’ll teach you!” Strong hands seized Tolivar’s shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled. In a panic, he was about to appeal to his talisman when he chanced to get a clear look at the face of his stocky captor, who had lost his costume headpiece in the tumult.
The face was broad, supremely ugly, and had one eye bandaged and the other alight with fury. Its owner was well known to Prince Tolivar, who stopped squirming from astonishment and exclaimed, “What are you doing here?”
“Probably the same thing you are,” retorted King Ledavardis.
25
Earlier, the King and Archduke Gyorgibo had found themselves trapped by the mob in one of the great commercial plazas a quarter league or so north of the pleasance. The elegant shops were closed with steel shutters, but food and liquor stalls and purveyors of festival novelties were open and doing a roaring business. In the center of the marketplace was a platform where an ensemble of musicians played rollicking airs on horns, doodlesacks, fipple-flutes, and drums. Because of the constricted space, people who wanted to dance were limited to jumping up and down and flapping the wings of their costumes. An illuminated clockface mounted on the façade of a great banking establishment showed an hour and a half until midnight.
“This is no good, Ledo,” said the Archduke to the Pirate King. “The crowd is getting so dense we can scarcely move.”
“But the spark inside the amulet points in that direction! God only knows why the villains have taken the Queen into the city’s center, but they have certainly done so. See for yourself, Gyor.”
The Sobranian eyed the trillium-amber pendant thrust beneath his nose. “Yes, yes, I know. But look—the avenue on the opposite side of the market is packed solidly with people heading toward the pleasance. It’s impossible for us to go that way. We’ll have to find another route.”
Gyorgibo and Ledavardis had left the other rulers at the imperial hunting lodge, to which Queen Anigel’s recovered trillium-amber had obligingly led them on the previous day. The escaped hostages had found the place deserted, and for a few precious hours, the King and the Archduke had slept like dead men. Awakening shortly before dawn, they shared a hearty meal that Queen Jiri and Duumvir Ga-Bondies scratched up from the lodge’s larder. Gyorgibo was almost unrecognizable after he had shorn his vart’s-nest of tangled hair, shaved, and dressed in clean garments. The two young men then bade their companions farewell, cautioning them not to stray away from the lodge, and rode off toward Brandoba via a roundabout trail familiar to Gyorgibo. The journey took them all day and part of the evening. All unknowing, they had barely avoided catching up with the rear guard of the Star Guild.
Before entering the Hunters Gate the pair abandoned their fronials for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Once inside Brandoba they bought a couple of cheap bird costumes, using money from the late Tazor’s effects, and slowly tracked Queen Anigel by means of the guiding spark within the heart of the trillium-amber until further progress through the crowd seemed to be impossible.
“How can we find another way,” Ledavardis complained, “unless the magical Flower turns us into true birds, and we fly?”
“Follow me,” the Archduke commanded. He unhooked a small gate shutting off a narrow space between two buildings, then slipped into a arrow-straight alley so constricted that it would accommodate only a single person at a time. It was very dark, having a deep gutter in the middle and trending rather steeply downhill. A noxious stench revealed the gutter to be an open sewer that collected effluent from cesspipes of the structures on either side.
“Phew!” Ledavardis cried. “Where the devil are we going? This is the exact opposite direction from that indicated by the trillium-amber!”
But the Sobranian hurried on without explanation, and after a time they came to an inky little canal clotted with floating detritus. Windowless walls with widely spaced doors fronted a narrow walk beside the sinister waterway.
“This is one of several small canals that flush municipal waste down to the lower River Dob and into the sea,” Gyorgibo said. “Each dawn, garbage barges drift along them and public scavengers empty the litterbins set out on the embankment.” He pointed upstream, where the sky was brightest. “If we go that way, we are bound to come to one of the great sewers serving the palace. When Denombo and I were lads, we used the tunnels to escape our tutors and prowl the city incognito.”
The Archduke moved swiftly along the slippery paved walk, coming at length to a massive wall. At water level was a semicircular opening twice his height, barred by a stout metal grate. “The wall is part of the palace’s northern perimeter. The grate of the sewer pipe is locked, of course. Deno and I once had keys—but you have something even better!”
King Ledavardis nodded and touched the grate’s lockplate with the drop of trillium-amber. There was a click, the bars opened, and Gyorgibo led the way into fetid blackness. Anigel’s amulet obligingly brightened like a tiny lantern.
“There’s a ledge just above the effluent. Keep close behind me, and for the love of heaven don’t fall into the muck. We don’t have too far to go. There’s a branch ahead that serves as a drain to the bosquets and fountains of the pleasance.”
They shuffled along and finally turned right into a narrower tunnel. Fortunately, the liquid flowing through it was fairly clean water, only a bit grayish in color, for here there w
ere no ledges and they had to wade along ankle-deep. To the surprise of the Pirate King, this pipe was faintly lit by widely spaced overhead grilled shafts. When they had gone a few hundred ells it became evident that they were beneath the pleasance itself. The noise of the crowd penetrated underground like rolling thunder.
“I think we’ll climb out here,” Gyorgibo said, indicating iron rungs that led up one of the shafts. “It should lead to one of the bosquets.” He ascended hand over hand and lifted the grille at the top. When Ledavardis emerged behind him he saw that they were within a small planting of trees and bushes, one of many miniature parks dotting the great square, set off from the open areas of the pleasance by iron fencing. The crowd stood shoulder-to-shoulder round about it, waiting for the fireworks display to begin. The din was deafening.
The Pirate King took out the trillium-amber and inspected it. Seeing that the directing line of light in its heart was now exceedingly bright, he spoke to the amulet. “Is your mistress nearby?”
The spark at the line’s tip began to blink rapidly. Ledavardis gave a cry of triumph and bellowed into the Archduke’s ear. “Queen Anigel is somewhere over in that direction, near that big fountain!”
Gyorgibo shook his head in puzzlement. “Incredible! I cannot fathom why the Star Men would bring her there, of all places.”
“Never mind. Let’s go!”
The two men penetrated the press of costumed people only by main strength, making their way with glacial slowness. A clock on one of the public buildings indicated that it was nearly midnight.
And then a costumed urchin heading in the same direction trod sharply upon the toes of Ledavardis and elbowed him in the stomach and kicked his shins for good measure, whereupon the King took hold of the boy and tussled with him, shouting, “You damned brat! I’ll teach you!”