“Are we any nearer to breaching the palace wall?” Purple asked. He had a firm grip on the arm of little Prince Tolivar, who listened with avid interest, his earlier fears almost forgotten.
“Unfortunately, my heavy weapons do not seem to be working very effectively. The damned curtainwall is over sixty ells thick! I must get up there quickly and attempt to break through it with the magic of both talismans. It is imperative that we take the keep and put the Queen and her children to death before the arrival of King Antar.”
One of the bodyguard who had been sent off to find a means of transport came running back. “Master, the mews behind the bank are full of fancy carriages, but there is not a beast to be found.”
“Never mind,” said Orogastus. “I cannot wait any longer.” He selected six of the Tuzameni warriors to accompany him and prepared to set off on foot for the palace, which was nearly a league inland in the midst of the great city. It was arranged that the Purple Voice would follow with Tolo and the rest of the bodyguard as best they could.
“Keep our young King well out of harm’s way,” the sorcerer concluded, “but be prepared to bring him forward as soon as the palace wall is broken down. We may want to use him to coerce his mother or the Archimage.”
With that Orogastus was off, his silver-and-black robes glittering with raindrops and the Three-Lobed Burning Eye ready in his hand.
The little Prince squirmed in the Purple Voice’s clutch, more angry than fearful at the terrible words his former hero had spoken. The minion gave the boy a nasty shake and bade him hold still, or he would fetch him a clout on his royal ear. Tolo began to weep from helpless fury. At that moment the other Tuzameni guards returned from their futile hunt, and they all set off up the steep street at a pace that made the boy stumble.
“You are going too fast!” Tolo protested. “The cobblestones are slippery! I am going to lose my crown!”
With a curse, the Purple Voice stopped and gave a command to one of the guardsmen. “Take the wretched brat on your shoulder, Kaitanus. I am encumbered with the Master’s star-box.”
A thick-browed stalwart with a bushy red beard caught Tolo and grudgingly swung him up. The overlapping steel plates armoring his back and hanging from the rear of his pointed casque cut painfully into the boy’s tender flesh and he shrieked: “Ow! Ow! I cannot bear it! It hurts to sit on him!”
The Purple Voice cursed even more luridly than before. “Put him down.” He eyed the Prince with distaste. “I suppose I shall have to carry you. Take the star-box then, and hold tight to it if you value your life.”
Again Tolo was swung up, this time to a softer seat, and the rain-dotted glassy box with the star emblem on its cover was laid reverently in his arms. He held it to his chest as they started off again.
The smoke and flame, the shouts of the looters and screams of the wounded, and the sickening piles of corpses seemed unreal to Tolo as he viewed them from his bouncing perch behind the purple hood. This devastated city was not the Derorguila he knew; it was a nightmare place he had never seen before. Only the great bulk of the palace far up the hill loomed as sturdy and reassuring as ever.
They came into a region of once-stately mansions where fierce fighting was still going on and where mobs of Raktumians were engaged in a frenzy of looting. Tolo saw pirates draped with stolen strands of pearls and golden chains and gem-studded bracelets engaged in mortal combat with soldiers and knights of the Two Thrones. The royal forces were greatly outnumbered, however, and the Prince shuddered to see them hacked to pieces by the howling enemy. Their very blood besprinkled his rain-soaked finery as the Purple Voice trotted past, secure in the midst of the six brawny bodyguards. The Tuzameni had their huge wavy-edged swords out now and beat off those Raktumians who were foolhardy enough to challenge them for the possession of the jewel-resplendent royal child.
As they came nearer to the palace and the tumult of fighting became more intense, poor Tolo could no longer bear to look. Squeezing his eyes tight shut, he pressed his crowned head to the star-box. Dry sobs racked him and he did not care whether he lived or died.
And at that moment death nearly took him.
He felt the Purple Voice lurch and heard the acolyte’s inarticulate shout. Opening his eyes, Tolo drew in a horrified breath as he saw the ornate three-story stone building above him ripple in a most singular manner. At the same time a deafening inhuman screech rang out, followed by continuous rumbling deeper than thunder that came not from the sky but from below the street. Building cornices and ornamental facades began to crumble. Roof tiles and bricks flew in all directions. Men were screaming in panic, both the battle and the looting forgotten, as they looked up to see avalanches of loose stone and entire walls falling down upon them.
“An earthquake!” cried the Purple Voice.
The Tuzameni guards were staggering and bellowing, flailing about impotently with their swords as clouds of dust and smoke billowed up. The sounds of falling masonry and breaking glass drowned out the human cries, and the rumbling reached a crescendo. Uttering a harsh squall, the Purple Voice danced about like a maniac as the pavement began to buckle beneath him. He let go of Tolo’s legs and thrust him violently away. The Prince flew through the air screaming, still clinging to the star-box. He fell, then found himself completely enveloped in something dark and scratchy which nonetheless had a springiness to it that had cushioned his landing.
For a long time Tolo only lay there amid the stunning noise and turmoil, wondering if he was already dead. But the Lords of the Air failed to appear to escort him to heaven, and the queasy movement of the earth ceased, and the crash of buildings breaking to pieces came to an end. At last he heard only the faint sounds of a few people groaning and weeping, a falling stone or two, creaks from sagging timbers, and the rain tapping on the crown that still clung obstinately to his aching head.
He was ensconced in the middle of a very large thranubush. Its dense, slightly sticky needles pricked his face and hands. Cautiously, still holding on to the star-box, he wriggled free and dropped to the ground, which was only half an ell beneath.
All about him was a devastation that left him speechless. Most of the mansions were in ruins, their walls cracked open to show the shattered interiors where furniture and wall-hangings now stood exposed to the soft rain. Mounds of rubble clogged the street as far as Tolo could see. The trees that had been planted in a row along the sidewalks were canted every which way. The walks themselves and the paved street had been heaved and twisted out of any semblance of an even plane. The air was full of thick dust, which the rain was fast dissipating.
Next to his lucky bush, a great pile of building stones that had once been a house wall rose almost three ells high. At one edge, protruding from beneath a granite door-lintel, was a muddy arm encased in a dirty purple sleeve. Just beyond it, half-buried, lay a dead Tuzameni guardsman, his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping in a silent scream.
Tolo climbed to his feet. He was scratched and bruised and his royal garments were a sorry mess. But no bones were broken and the ache in his head was beginning to subside. He clambered to the top of the rubble heap and stared in the direction of the palace, waiting for the murk to clear.
The fortress of the Two Thrones still stood! In the distance he heard the sound of war-horns and martial shouts, and then the peculiar thudding chirps made by certain weapons of the Vanished Ones, and the whistle of flying crossbow-bolts.
So the war was still going on.
Tolo climbed down. He unclasped his torn and dirty white fur cloak and laid it aside. He took off his blue velvet robe, then removed the crown, the royal chain, and the ornate baldric and scabbard he had worn. Handfuls of mud served to dull his gold brocade suit, his face, and his hair. He used the ruby-hilted sword to cut a length of velvet from the blue robe, and with this he wrapped the star-box. The rest of the robe and the discarded royal appurtenances he carried to the place where the Purple Voice and the guards had perished.
With special car
e, the Prince arranged the robe with the baldric and scabbard over it and the golden chain flung artistically aside in the region of the collar. Then he hauled many broken chunks of stone and heaped them over the garment and the other items, leaving them barely visible so that it did seem as though a small body lay beneath. As a final touch, he left the crown lying in plain sight at the edge of the pile.
Tolo put his fur cloak on again after dirtying it well. It covered both the little sword, which he had thrust into his belt, and the star-box. Then he was ready to go home.
There was a certain small, disused door in the palace wall, down on the west side near the Midden Gate. It had once been used by the muckers of the royal stable to dispose of manure, in the ancient days before that commodity was known to be valuable field-dressing. Nowadays the old muck-door was overgrown with creepers and known only to persons who worked in the stable—such as Ralabun, the aboriginal Master of the Queen’s Animals.
Ralabun, Tolo’s special friend, had shown him the secret door two years ago. He used it, he said, on certain fine nights when the Three Moons shone and his heart ached at the constraints of living with humankind. Then Ralabun the Nyssomu had crept out of the palace through the secret door and gone down to the River Guila; he had paddled to a certain swampy island and there prayed and sang in the ancient Way of the Mire Folk for many hours before returning.
That door, Ralabun told his young friend, was his most precious secret.
The Master of Animals had never dreamt that the door might also serve to save the life of a runaway prince … if he could only reach it in time.
Orogastus had only just arrived at the great square fronting on the north gate to the palace when the earthquake struck.
The square was mobbed with nearly six thousand men, most of whom had taken up positions well beyond range of the crossbows and catapults shooting from the battlements. The Tuzameni squads manning the weapons of the Vanished Ones had advanced upon the fortifications under cover of lumbering armored wagons with narrow slits at the front, through which the muzzles of the magical weapons were fired. The high curtainwall of the palace was pocked and battered but still intact. Some siege-wagons stood blackened and smoking, having been struck by cauldrons of liquid burning pitch flung from catapults on the palace ramparts. Bodies studded with crossbow-bolts lay about them. More dead men surrounded an abandoned ram standing in front of the main gate of Derorguila Palace.
When the ground began to shake and rumble, a great cry arose from the invasion force. Some men were immediately thrown to the ground while others rushed about in a panic, brandishing their weapons and screaming that the Archimage was attacking. The siege-wagons bounced like small boats on a stormy sea, and around the perimeter of the square, buildings began to topple.
Orogastus thought at first that the Archimage had done it. Tumbling to his knees, half-blinded by the sudden clouds of dust that arose and almost instantly turned to muddy drizzle, he held on to the Burning Eye with a death-grip and besought the talisman with all his might to calm the quaking land, to save his life and the lives of the troops. But when the earth movement continued unabated, he cried out in desperation:
“Haramis! Haramis, for the love of God! Would you destroy your own people as well as my own?”
Her reply came after a shocked instant, and he saw her, clinging to a shuddering couch in some palace chamber, not frightened at all but only resigned and spiritless.
It is not my doing. The world trembles because it is losing its balance. And the fault is yours even if you did not deliberately set about to cause it.
“What do you mean?” he cried.
But she bespoke him no more and her image faded. A few moments later the ground was firm again. With difficulty, he hauled himself to his feet.
His Tuzameni bodyguard was cursing and demanding to know what had happened, as were most of the other fighting men nearby. But as Orogastus was about to reassure them he heard a sudden strange sound.
Cheers.
Boisterous, full-throated cheers in the accents of both Tuzamen and Raktum. Men were pointing in the direction of the palace, shouting and laughing, many still sprawled on the fractured pavement or climbing woozily to their feet.
“The wall! The wall!” they roared. “Hail to Orogastus! Hail to the mighty sorcerer! Hail!”
Stupefied, Orogastus turned about and looked.
On the western side of the palace gate, the massive stone curtainwall was riven from top to bottom. The great west tower on that side had half crumbled also, and the eastern tower at the opposite end of the fortifications sported a perilous web of cracks.
“Hail to Orogastus! Hail! Hail!”
The war-horns of King Ledavardis of Raktum blatted out the call to charge. With a mighty shout, the pirate horde rose up and began to rush pell-mell toward the new opening.
“Master, that was magnificently done,” said one of the Tuzameni guards in a quavering voice. “But next time give us fair warning.”
The sorcerer could only nod. He sheathed the talisman and adjusted his star-mask, which had been twisted awry in his fall.
“Master, shall we join the advance?” another guard cried eagerly.
“In a moment. I must seek out my Voices.”
Cupping his gloved hand over the talisman’s pommel, Orogastus commanded a Sight of his Yellow Voice. Immediately he saw a vision of the acolyte, running behind the squat armored form of King Ledavardis. The talisman called the Three-Headed Monster was on the Voice’s head.
My Yellow Voice, is all well with you and the Goblin Kinglet?
Oh, yes, Master! And how overawed he was at your godlike stroke! You have accomplished in a brief moment what hours of bombardment by the magical weapons could not. It was incredible! Miraculous—
Orogastus interrupted him. Enough! Listen carefully to me. You must now behave with great caution. Enter the palace with the advance force but try to find an excuse to leave the King’s side. I wish you to hide in some safe place until I come to you. I require the talismanic coronet for my confrontation with the Archimage and you must preserve it even at the cost of your life. Is this understood?
Yes, Master. I understand and obey.
Farewell then, my Voice, until I come.
Orogastus then ordered his talisman to show him the Purple Voice. But when that vision came, he staggered, voicing such an anguished groan that the Tuzameni guards all drew their swords and crowded close about him in consternation, demanding to know what had happened.
But he could not tell them that the Purple Voice had passed into the peace of the Dark Powers, and that little Prince Tolivar was also dead.
“There is no time to waste,” Orogastus said. “None of you are hurt, thanks to my protection. We must press forward! Have no fear. I shall continue to shield us from all harm.”
The guards grouped closely around him and began to march toward the gap in the palace wall, a small disciplined body in the midst of a screaming throng of Raktumians.
Orogastus had spoken with his usual arrogant assurance, but he was beginning to feel the first pricklings of apprehension. The quake had come without warning and he knew he had been unable to halt or even moderate it in the slightest. That the bodyguard and most of the invading army were unhurt was due to their being in the open square, rather than among the falling buildings. But Orogastus could admit that to no one, nor could he say how greatly he had been drained by the sea battle and his attempt to thwart the two Archimages.
He did retain enough strength to shield himself and the bodyguard from enemy missiles; but he would not be able to do much more for some time to come. Not until he wore the coronet again.
That talisman, he had discovered, was the one that most magnified his thoughts and strengthened him internally, while the pointless sword magnified his actions. He realized that it had been a great mistake to let it out of his possession, even for a moment.
Dark Powers, he prayed, keep it safe! Let me get to it before she realize
s that I do not have it!
The old, old man wagged his head, smiling a superior smile. He had known from the first that it wouldn’t work. Neither side was going to win. He’d told the other two so when they first cooked up the scheme and showed it to him.
What was meant to be, would be! It was as stark and simple as that. No sense in messing about, trying to interfere with the direction that the cosmos wheeled. You might manage to deflect the inevitable for a little while, but in the long run things would happen as they were supposed to happen.
Too bad if it all went smash again, but in time it would heal. Hadn’t it done so before?
He knew how the ridiculous affair would end. It was all so petty! Banal. Insignificant when compared with the momentous concerns that properly occupied his attention.
Beneath contempt, the lot of them. Never seeing the solutions that lay under their noses. Making mistake after mistake.
It was maddening. Why did he even bother to watch?
Pretty soon he would really have to stop.
30
Haramis turned away from the smashed window of the withdrawing room and made her way unsteadily back to the couch. The shock and the disorientation of being awakened by the earthquake and the sorcerer’s bespoken shout were beginning to fade, displaced by the more horrifying reality she had just looked upon: an enormous army of howling, horn-blowing invaders massed outside the palace walls, now streaming in through the breach like water leaking relentlessly into a doomed boat.
And Orogastus was among them.
What should she do? What could she do?
First, she would have to cudgel her reeling brain into a semblance of orderly thinking. She sank down onto the couch and pressed her talisman to her forehead. There. That was better.
The colossal temblor that had devastated much of Derorguila seemed to have done minimal damage to Zotopanion Keep itself, aside from breaking all of its glazing and tumbling the contents of shelves and tables to the floor. Rain was blowing in the window, soaking the draperies. It was getting very cold again, as she knew it would.