She sailed into the refreshment room with her chin high, ignoring the knot of other rulers who swiftly made way for her, and went directly to the crystal wine-ewers, where she filled a large goblet. The uncouth Emperor of Sobrania, the only one who had thus far partaken of the refreshments, ceased stuffing his mouth with broiled fowl and studied Ganondri’s contempt-filled face for a moment. Then, seeming to lose his appetite, he joined the others watching the Master of Tuzamen.
Portolanus took his time approaching Yondrimel. The diamonds topping his pointed hat flashed in the candlelight as he tottered and slouched across the white marble floor with aggravating slowness, continuing to bestow mocking salutes and droll grimaces upon the spectators. They were now openly chuckling and giving other evidence that they were glad that the tedious opening acts of the festivity were over, and the star turn finally come on stage.
King Yondrimel frowned, then immediately recomposed his features, moistening his lips over and over again as if to prevent their cracking as he smiled at the approaching apparition. He lifted both hands in a gesture of warm friendliness shown theretofore only to Ganondri and Ledavardis.
Portolanus suddenly lifted his right arm.
The music mysteriously stopped, cut off in midphrase.
The crowd gasped and held its breath.
The sorcerer held a golden rod with a faceted crystal at the end that gave off prismatic flashes. This he thrust at the King in a parody of a sabreur’s lunge, grinning all the while. Yondrimel drew back in astonished apprehension.
“Ah-hah!” cackled the Master of Tuzamen. “Afraid, are you?”
He lunged again, and there was a bright flash and a puff of smoke. A knee-high mound of small, shining platinum coins appeared before the surprised young monarch, tinkling as the occasional crown slid to the floor. The watching rulers and the crowd of nobles and courtiers exclaimed in amazement.
Yondrimel had swallowed the indignant words he was about to utter when the sorcerer impugned his courage. Smacking his lips, he began to thank Portolanus for the great heap of money—but he fell silent as the zany Master suddenly began to whirl like a top, his bulky green-and-orange garment ballooning around him. The spinning wizard seemed to become a blurred ball—except that his conical hat surmounted by its diamond star remained motionless. Then the ball collapsed into a perfectly flat puddle of fabric, and the hat sat ridiculously upright at the center.
Portolanus had disappeared.
“Zoto’s Teeth,” muttered Antar. “He is nothing but a carnival conjurer!”
Something was happening under the striped cloth. The pointed hat trembled. The fabric began to ripple in concentric waves, and then it humped up in great irregular puffs, inflating again like a balloon while the hat was tossed wildly about at the top of it. The striped sphere became twice the height of a man and the crowd shrieked with delighted anticipation, mingled not a little with fear. Inside the balloon a light waxed and waned in brilliance and the bouncing hat abruptly inverted itself, so that the sparkling diamond star was poised above the cloth.
The star thrust down, puncturing the glowing balloon. There was a dazzling flash and a loud explosion. Everyone shrieked—and when they regained their sight, they beheld Portolanus again, dressed as he had been in the beginning, slapping his knees and crowing with laughter. After a stunned moment King Yondrimel began to grin and applaud, and the nobles and courtiers hastened to follow suit.
“A cheap charlatan’s ruse,” Antar said to Anigel, and he turned away and would have gone to get a glass of wine.
But the sorcerer cried: “Stop!” And pointed his crystal wand.
All eyes in the ballroom followed the wand’s lead to King Antar. There was abrupt silence. Antar turned slowly and regarded Portolanus with a face immobile and forbidding as stone. One hand rested upon the pommel of his sword. “Did you address me, magician?”
“Indeed I did, great King of Laboruwenda.” The tone was wheedling. “If you would condescend to approach, the Master of Tuzamen will most happily demonstrate marvels that might impress even your regal skepticism.”
Anigel took hold of her husband’s arm, whispering anxiously: “No, my love! Don’t go!”
But Antar shook free of her and strode back into the center of the ballroom, where Yondrimel stood amid the welter of scattered treasure, his mouth hanging open and his darting eyes for once riveted with attention. A sudden strong gust of wind made the gauzy window-drapes billow, and there was a distant rumble of thunder. Another much louder thunderclap occurred immediately, and then a great stroke of lightning lit the riverside gardens, and the pleasure palace shook with the teeth-rattling crash of thunder that accompanied it.
The sorcerer smiled. “Besides the small amusements I have already shown, I am prepared to bring you more spectacular demonstrations of power. For instance, this storm out of season.”
Another series of lightning bolts revealed the garden as bright as day. Along the formal paths bounced eerie glowing globes of blue fire the size of melons. More fireballs danced about the masts of the tall ships moored along the riverside quay. Before the astounded crowd could react, one of these things flew in through a window, hissing loudly, and leapt to poise itself on the uplifted wand of Portolanus.
“By the Flower!” gasped Anigel. “He commands the storm!”
The sorcerer’s twisted face beamed upon her, lit hideously by the ball of crackling blue lightning above him. “Oh, yes. And much more besides, proud Queen. I command rewards for my friends and the very opposite for my foes and detractors. I admonish all of you to remember that.”
Then, casually, he tossed the fulgurant ball at Antar.
With an oath, the King drew his sword and struck a mighty blow at the uncanny missile. At the moment the blade met blue fire, both Antar and Portolanus vanished in twin clouds of smoke.
Anigel screamed and rushed forward, pulling her talisman coronet from her gown and holding it before her with both hands. “Stay, Portolanus! I command you to stay and restore my husband to me!”
The palace was assaulted by yet another great blast of lightning and thunder, and all within were shouting as the rising wind buffeted the chandeliers and the tapers began to blow out. Anigel suppressed a sob as it became evident that the talisman was not going to bring Antar or the sorcerer back. She turned furiously toward King Yondrimel. The royal youth had gone white with terror and his courtiers and guards began rushing to his side.
Anigel stood before him, talisman held high. The trillium-amber inset in it blazed like a tiny sun, and the amber atop her great Crown of State and in the necklace she wore glowed scarcely less bright.
“Order Portolanus to bring King Antar back!” she shouted in a terrible voice to Yondrimel. “You treacherous wretch! I command you!”
“I can’t bring him back!” the young King wailed. “Don’t hurt me! I didn’t know—I had no idea—they never told me that—”
“Behold!” bellowed the Emperor of Sobrania. “Out in the river! The Raktumian pirate ships have set sail! And the wizard’s craft as well! I’ll lay you platinum crowns to plar-pits they’ve kidnapped Antar!”
Everyone rushed to that side of the ballroom to look. The almost continual flashes of lightning showed five galleys moving into midstream and heading down toward the estuary, their sails swollen by the storm-wind. Four of the ships were black and one was white. It took only seconds for the crowd to realize that the Tuzameni and Raktumian guests had all melted away during the magic show.
“After the bastards!” cried redoubtable Queen Jiri of Galanar.
The nobles and knights of Laboruwenda, Var, and Engi took up the cry, followed immediately by the indignant worthies of Imlit and Okamis. There was a great commotion. Emperor Denombo and his feather-decked Sobranians flourished their two-pronged swords and went out the ballroom windows howling their war cry, trampling through the flower beds on their way to the docks. Others followed after by more conventional routes, heedless that their fine clothes were b
eing soaked by the heavy rain that had begun to fall.
Anigel, with Lady Ellinis and Eternal Princess Raviya and Queen Ila of Var trying to comfort her, still stood transfixed in the center of the emptying ballroom. King Yondrimel had disappeared, as had most of his compatriots. Some of the younger royal children began to whimper. The elderly guests, as well as those women who had not gone off with the warriors, gathered in a sympathetic group about the Laboruwendian Queen.
Anigel still held her talisman high. “Show me my husband, Antar!” she commanded it. Those round about her exclaimed in awe as the coronet in her hands seemed to become a mirror swirling with light. Then the image of a man clad in dark blue appeared. He lay senseless on a cramped small bunk that was obviously in the hold of a ship. His limbs were bound and three hulking pirates, still in court dress, guarded him with bared blades.
“Show me what ship carries Antar!” cried Anigel.
The talisman showed the huge trireme of the Queen Regent of Raktum.
“Show me Portolanus!”
The scene changed to the poop deck of Queen Ganondri’s flagship. On it were the Queen Regent herself, red robes flying in the wind, several ship’s officers, and the now familiar blur having the contour of a man.
“Show me the manner of running of the Raktumian and Tuzameni ships all together,” Anigel commanded.
The area within the coronet showed the five vessels strung out as they raced down the river. The big black trireme brought up the rear, all three banks of oars flashing in the storm-light. The vision winked out a moment later.
“Be of good cheer, lass,” the venerable Princess Raviya told Anigel, giving her shoulder a pat of encouragement. “In this wind, our fast little cutters will soon run the villains down, and foul their oars and rudders.”
“And good old Emperor Denombo and his barbarians will be close behind,” Queen Ila added. “His ship is nearly as big as the pirate flagship, and better equipped to ram.”
“The Raktumians won’t be able to use their brimstone catapults in the rain,” Lady Ellinis said. “With luck, we’ll have the scoundrels before they reach the open sea—”
“No,” said Anigel bleakly. “See here, in my talisman.”
As many as could pushed closer to look over her shoulder at the new magical depiction. The first of the speedy Engian cutters had just come into view behind the big trireme and was rapidly closing in. All at once a titanic flash of lightning lit the river, and those watching saw a strange columnar thing hovering in the water in front of the Engian, dead black and fully twice as tall as the trireme’s three lofty masts. The tiny Engian vessel, racing before the wind, tried to veer aside. But the column writhed directly into its path and smote it head-on, and the cutter vanished as if it had never existed.
Those who saw cried out in horror.
“What is it?” asked one of Queen Jiri’s daughters. “A sea serpent conjured up by the sorcerer?”
Raviya of Engi, tears streaming down her withered cheeks, said: “Nay, it is a waterspout—a kind of tornado that forms over the sea. We encounter them around our islands sometimes during the summer monsoons, but never during the Dry Time. Alas! There comes another one! Our brave seamen will soon break off pursuit, as will the others following. No vessel, no matter how stout, can survive an encounter with one of those devilish things.”
Across the ballroom, a fresh tumult broke out among the Zinoran guards at the main door. A voice shouted: “Madam! Oh, Madam, what a calamity!” A man in dripping Labornoki finery broke free and ran toward Anigel.
She lowered the talisman. The vision within it disappeared and the glow of its trillium-amber faded, as did the radiance in Anigel’s other jewels. Her face bore a haunted expression but she did not speak until Lord Penapat came pounding up to her, his eyes wild and his broad face so reddened that he seemed about to fall in a fit.
“Oh, Madam!” He sank to his knees before the Queen. “How can I tell you? The shame of it!… The treachery!… How could she have done such a thing?”
“Calm yourself, Peni. There now, old friend! We know already that the King has been abducted by the foul sorcerer—”
“But that is not all!” The big man flung his arms out in an agony of despair. “My wife! My own wife, Sharice! She sent me on a fool’s errand from the ballroom during the Procession of Felicitation, giving me a note she said was most urgent, that I was to deliver to Marshal Owanon. But the message seemed to make no sense, and when I returned to my wife, others told me she had gone, taking them with her, and I did not understand, and—oh, God! I ran after them, but it was already too late!”
Anigel’s heart seemed to stop. “My children,” she said in a dead voice. “My children.”
“Sharice has spirited them away,” the weeping Chamberlain said. “All three of them, and my wife as well, were seen boarding the galley of the Pirate Queen.”
“This note to Lord Owanon,” Lady Ellinis said sternly. “What did it say?”
“There were two words only,” Penapat replied. “‘Your talisman.’”
6
In the Flame-Girts and in the Smoky Isles, the marine volcanoes were erupting. Dormant fire-cones on the mainland had begun to smoke ominously as well, and the lands round about them were trembling. The Ohogan Mountains and the other non-volcanic ranges south of the Peninsula that bordered the Sempiternal Icecap began to experience unseasonal blizzards. In the lowlands and on the high swampy plateau of Ruwenda, extraordinary thunderstorms raged, and the southern and eastern seas were churned by screaming gales.
When the calamitous weather and the stirring of the world’s fiery bowels first started on the night of the abduction, Haramis knew about it almost at once. The special sensitivity she had cultivated over the years—that mystical perceptiveness that alerted the Archimage when all was not well in her land or among her people—caused a profound unease to afflict her that was not completely attributable to the shocking events at the coronation that Anigel had informed her of.
In the hours following, after Haramis had ascertained that there was no immediate thing she could do to help Antar or the kidnapped children, she used her talisman to scan the countries of the Peninsula, and then the other nations beyond. She studied the unseasonable storms, the earthquakes and landslides, the belching volcanoes, the agitated behavior of the wild animals, and knew that they were not merely side effects of the magical tempest engendered by Portolanus to aid his escape from Zinora. Something else was happening: something much worse.
She demanded that the Three-Winged Circle give her an explanation.
The talisman again showed her a vision of a blood-colored trillium—and it also spoke:
“Now is the balance of the world truly undone, for the reborn heir of the Star Men has within his grasp two elements of the great Sceptre of Power. Beware, Archimage of the Land! Seek the good counsel of others of your kind and mend your imperfections. Take action and eschew your bootless study and inadequate scrutiny. Otherwise the Star Men will triumph after all, and the healing of twelve times ten hundreds go for naught.”
The voice fell silent and Haramis stared at the vision of the Blood Trillium in frozen disbelief until it melted into nothingness. Then indignation took the place of her earlier feelings of dread, and she rose up from her table in the library and began to pace angrily back and forth in front of the fireplace.
Seek good counsel of whom? Of her silly triplet sisters?
Mend her imperfections?
Her life that she had dedicated to study and service—futile?
Her continuing loving oversight of Laboruwenda and the parts of the world affecting it—inadequate?
How dare the talisman insult her so! She was doing her very best and had done so for the twelve years of her tenure as Archimage. Ruwenda and Labornok were united and peaceful, the humans prospering and the aborigines … well, most of them were far better off than they had ever been before. If the world was out of balance, then the evil sorcerer Portolanus was cert
ainly to blame, not she!
And why, instead of ordering her to consult with them, had not the talisman pointed out the imperfections of her sisters as well as Haramis’s own, when their flaws were so much more blatant?
Consider Kadiya! Always rushing about impatiently, always proposing simple-minded solutions to the complex problems affecting relations between humans and Folk. Arrogant in her righteousness, ever stirring pots that were better left to simmer quietly. She had lost her precious talisman through carelessness and stupidity—and now it was within the grasp of Portolanus.
Then there was Anigel, that lovely, worthy Queen—ruling with a cheerful caution so dedicated that it was stultifying, ignoring the malcontents of Labornok and the manifest injustices in Ruwenda, blithely certain that they would heal themselves. Her husband, more sensible, had tried to warn her what was afoot, but again and again she had dismissed his worries as unfounded. And he, loving her past reason and not wanting to chance discord between them, had convinced himself that she was right. Poor King Antar, so blinded by devotion!
And the three royal children, taught that life was a lovely tapestry of peace and joy, cosseted and overprotected—except when they had needed protection the most! And now King-husband and children alike abducted and held for ransom, their lives forfeit unless Anigel gave up her magical talisman to Portolanus.
And she would do it! She was weak and sentimental enough to do it!
Lords of the Air, what a pair of imbeciles her sisters were! What had possessed the Archimage Binah to think that they were worthy to carry instruments of profound magical power? Why had not all three talismans been placed in her care?