Nepanthe’s resistance remained like steel or adamant, wearing but never breaking. Six years later, when her brothers’ through-the-halls war games matured into plans for genuine conquests, she still hadn’t surrendered. She accepted him as part of her life. Maybe she even expected an eventual pairing. She had learned to be at ease with him again. But she refused to help the relationship to develop an affectionate scope.
Impatience undid Varthlokkur. One evening he proposed. As usual, Nepanthe put him off. The first of their great angry arguments ensued. Afterward, frustrated, he returned to Fangdred determined to pursue a course the Old Man had championed for years.
The Old Man. He might have been a mystery to himself. No man could keep in memory all the ages and events he had seen and heard and experienced. He barely felt he belonged to the realm of humankind. Lusts, loves, hatreds, agonies and joys, passions, what were those in the mill of time? Grist. Just grist for the grinding wheel. What remained of parents dead ten thousand years? Not even a memory, other than unspeakably archaic, alien names. Youth? He had never been young. Or so it seemed now. He had few memories of running joy, of a girl, and wildflowers and clover scents in spring (her name sometimes haunted his lonely dreams, and her face frequently came to him in his odd, brief, happy moments). His past was a corridor infinitely long, passing a million doors with memories shut up inside, all in old man’s shades of gray. The color had faded from present and future. The past dwindled back to the dark point where he had first encountered the Director. He missed that most, the brights, the scarlets, the greens, the blues, of mighty loves and aches and passions. He was the oldest man in the world.
Except one, though he thought his friend, the Star Rider, the Director, might well be dead. He had heard nothing from the man since the Nawami Crusades, a thousand years ago, though his handiwork appeared, in hints, in the background of the epic tale of the Fall.
Once the Old Man had wanted to live forever. But then he and the world had been young and he had loathed the thought of missing its future ages. Once when magic had been equally young and unbound, and he still had had the capacity for innovation, he had risked his soul and humanity to seize the immortality he owned. It was an irreversible Star Rider gift that exacted its cruel price in alienation and boredom and a debt he might never completely discharge.
There were times when he thought Death might be his own sweet angel of the morning (with a face like that of his love forgotten), a woman he would gladly embrace when She came. She would give him surcease from this world, where his days were undistinguished marchers in endless columns of sameness. Freedom She would be. Mother Night with a soft black womb wherein he could lie forever at peace…
But Her arms could be achieved easily. Why didn’t he jump off Fangdred’s wall? Because he also feared the Lady he desired. Nor could he yet tolerate the thought of a world without himself in it. That urge, that overwhelming compulsion, that had driven him to immortality, still burned undampened among the fires of his soul. He might miss something. But what, if he had lived all those ages and had become achingly bored by their historic march? If catastrophes and conquests and the finest artistic products of the human mind weren’t enough, what would suffice? To what did he look forward?
When he was in a dark mood, snappish, such were the thoughts he thought. He had no idea what he wanted anymore, nor did he search. He was content to wait till it came to him. Meanwhile, the habits of ages swept him onward. He wished for oblivion, and bent every effort to escape it. Ten thousand years had he lived; perhaps he would see ten thousand more.
And he did have his debts and obligations. There was interest to pay on the long life he had been loaned.
A vast map lay on the table in the gloomy room atop the Wind Tower. On its eastern borders were fangy marks representing the Dragon’s Teeth. At the top, more fangs: the Kratchnodians, and among them, the name
Ravenkrak.
Speckled across the middle, and tending south, were the names of cities and kingdoms: Iwa Skolovda, Dvar, Prost Kamenets, Itaskia, Greyfells, Mendalayas, Portsmouth, and a hundred more. Varthlokkur and the Old Man bent over them, considering the possibilities.
“Here,” said the Old Man, finger stabbing the Kratchnodians just above Iwa Skolovda. “The ideal base. The people, bandits all, have a grudge against the city. An able man, unswayed by tribal jealousies, could unite them into an army strong enough to take Iwa Skolovda by surprise, yet not strong enough to hold it. I think that’s essentially what you’ve got in mind. And what you need if they do put Nepanthe on the throne there. We’ll get her then, when they lose interest and turn to other conquests.”
“Fine, if we can catch her. She’s not stupid.” Though she tried to hide it, Varthlokkur had discovered in Nepanthe a brilliant intuitive mind. Where she was dullest she had, generally, intentionally blinded herself.
“Settled, then? We hire this bin Yousif and his people, and use them to isolate her at Iwa Skolovda?”
“I guess.” A premonition weighed heavily on him. It wouldn’t be as simple as the Old Man made it sound.
He ached with the approaching cruelty of his second great destruction. “Somehow, I don’t think it’ll work. I’ll end up fighting her brothers.”
The Old Man shrugged. “Blank shields are going begging. You could stomp up an army overnight.”
Varthlokkur had no taste for the trend of the Old Man’s thoughts. He had had his fill of armies and wars centuries ago.
“Well, they’ve got the Horn of the Star Rider now,” said the Old Man, his amazement barely under control.
Varthlokkur turned to the mirror, drawn more by his companion’s tone than the event itself. Somehow, Nepanthe’s brothers had managed to locate that elusive ancient, whose origins were more mystery-bound than those of the Old Man. Recently they had been stalking him through the westernmost reaches of the Kratchnodians. Now they had caught him unawares. It was an incredible coup. The Star Rider was far too old to be taken easily.
“They’re fools. All fools.” Bitterness. “One magical talisman won’t make them invincible. Not even the Windmjirnerhorn.”
The Horn in question had cornucopian attributes, though it didn’t much resemble the mythical horn of plenty. Properly manipulated, the Windmjirnerhorn would provide almost anything asked of it. For ages power-hungry men had tried, and sometimes managed, to steal it. But the Star Rider always stole it back—after greed had destroyed the original thieves.
Turran wanted the Horn as a source of wealth and stores for raising and supplying armies—armies that would never materialize because Turran would never learn to manipulate the Horn correctly. None of the thieves ever had. They always brought their dooms upon them before they did. “They’ll find out. Sticking their noses out in the world is just asking to get them bloodied. Ilkazar is still a bogeyman. Like me. And some Iwa Skolovdans still nurse bitter feelings about the Vice-Royalty.”
“Which’ll be useful to us.”
“True. Well, I’d better get on with it. Make my arrangements with bin Yousif. You’ll keep an eye on things?”
The Old Man followed events faithfully. He saw bin Yousif enter the foothills in the guise of a witch-doctor and begin his work. He saw Ragnarson enlist with and assume command of Turran’s mercenaries. He saw Mocker begin his slow trek toward Iwa Skolovda in the Saltimbanco avatar. He watched Haroun, insufficiently informed of the aims of his employer, send an agent to make sure Iwa Skolovda’s King was aware of Storm King intentions. Varthlokkur’s plot survived only because Turran was moving already. Then came the changes of fortune, the worst of which was Haroun’s failure to capture Nepanthe at Iwa Skolovda. But Varthlokkur had expected that. He already had an army gathering to move against Ravenkrak.
Then Ravenkrak didn’t fall. Ragnarson wouldn’t fulfill his contract. And bin Yousif refused to waste lives storming the place. Varthlokkur, impatiently directing the siege himself, angrily responded by taking a battalion around the Candareen to spend a month hacking
a stairway up two thousand feet of cliff to attack the castle from behind…
Only to arrive and find that Haroun, by cunning, was getting his job done after all.
But the goal of it all, Nepanthe, was missing when the smoke cleared from the ruins of Varthlokkur’s second great destruction. On a snowy morning, after frantically casting spells among the countless dead, the wizard found her halfway down the mountain. He caught her and concealed her, and when the way was clear he set out for Fangdred. A month later, with a still furious Nepanthe in tow, he returned home.
The affair had been a fiasco. Nothing had been gained but death. Varthlokkur’s abandoned employees were in an uproar both over not having been paid, and over the abduction of Mocker’s wife. Several of Nepanthe’s brothers, with the Windmjirnerhorn and their storm-sending equipment, had evaded destruction and were loose, and driven by a bitter thirst for revenge. The wizard had captured his prize, but the matter was far from closed.
And Varthlokkur knew it. He had hardly returned, gotten Nepanthe installed in her new apartment, and had made his presence known when he summoned the Old Man to the Wind Tower. “The goal has been reached,” he mumbled. “She’s here. But I’ve left enough loose ends to tie into a rope to hang me.”
“‘A patch in a shroud to bury me,’” said the Old Man. Varthlokkur didn’t recognize the line immediately. It came from
The Wizards of Ilkazar,
from King Vilis’s final lament, spoken while he watched the very heart of the Empire dying around him. He had complained of his ruined estate and of how things were hemming him in. Especially Varthlokkur, the patch.
“I have to prepare. Silver and ebony, moonlight and night, these were ever mine. Do we have a craftsman who can make me silver bells? Here, here,” he said, digging a small, aged casket from clutter piled in a corner. Bits of dry earth fell to the floor when he opened it. Perhaps two dozen ancient silver coins lay within. “These. Make me bells of these, each marked with my thirteen signs.”
The Old Man did not, for a time, respond. He hadn’t ever seen Varthlokkur this way. His friend was overflowing with deeds and moods.
“And I’ll make the arrow myself.” He quickly scrounged a billet of ebony and a kit of small tools from the corner pile. He kept two silver coins from the old casket. “Go! Go! The bells. Get me the bells.” Mystified, the Old Man went.
Days later, he returned with the casket of bells. Varthlokkur was fletching an arrow at the time. It had a shaft of ebony. Its head was a coin hammered to a point. Silver from another coin had been inlaid into the shaft finely, in runes and cabalistic signs. “Here. Help me rig this.” The wizard had collected a strange pile of odds and ends on the table.
Following Varthlokkur’s instructions, the Old Man assembled a mobile of tiny, clapperless bells. They would ring off one another. The arrow turned lazily beneath them.
“My warning device,” Varthlokkur told him. “The bells will ring if someone comes after me, starting while he’s still fifty leagues away. They’ll ring louder when he gets closer. The arrow will point at him. And so it should be easy to find him and stop him.” He smiled, proud of his little creation.
It was a pity, the Old Man thought, that Varthlokkur was so single-minded about Nepanthe. Marriage had radicalized her. From a rabbit she had grown into a tigress. She was having no man but the one who had liberated her. That actor. That thief. That professional traitor.
Varthlokkur’s face, those days, often expressed his silent agony, over what he had done, over what he seemed to have lost. The Old Man tried to make Nepanthe understand when he wasn’t around.
She did, a little, but she was a strong-minded woman. As it had taken her ages to accept a man, so might it cost another decade to swing her affections around.
He shook his head sadly. The Director played a cruel game.
The Old Man abhorred pity in all its forms, yet he was forced to pity his friend Varthlokkur.
F
OURTEEN:
S
PRING, 997 AFE
W
HILE
T
HEY
W
ERE
E
NEMIES
T
HEY
W
ERE
R
ECONCILED
A month had passed. Ragnarson, bin Yousif, and their associates had become certain of what they had suspected for some time: Varthlokkur wouldn’t appear for the payoff. For at least the hundredth time, Ragnarson asked, “Are you
sure
he said he’d meet us here?”
And bin Yousif, gazing out an open window at the morning sun, replied as always, “I’m sure. He said, ‘The Red Hart Inn, Itaskia.’ You think it’s too early for ale?”
“Ask Yalmar. It’s his tavern. Yalmar!”
An aging man limped from the kitchen, without speaking drew and delivered two mugs. As he left, though, he smote his forehead suddenly and said, “Oh. Meant to tell ye. There were a fellow here after ye last night…”
Both jerked to attention. “Dusky old man with a nose like mine?” bin Yousif demanded.
Yalmar considered Haroun’s aquiline beak. “Nay, can’t say so. Fortyish, black hair, heavy sort.”
Bin Yousif frowned. Ragnarson was about to ask something when Elana descended the stair from the rooming floor, her step portentous. “He’s gone,” she said. “Sometime during the night.”
“Mocker?”
“Who else?”
They had been keeping him tied for his own protection, to prevent his charging off after Varthlokkur and Nepanthe—which might also compromise their chances of getting paid.
Bin Yousif sighed. “Well, it’s come. I was afraid it would. A mad stab at a hornet’s nest, and us without legs to run on.”
“What do you mean?” A vacant question. Ragnarson’s interest was all in Elana, who had gone to stare out a side window. She seemed terribly distant of late.
“I mean that Mocker’s making us help him, like it or not. He knows damned well that to Varthlokkur we’re a team. So, whether or not we’re involved, he’ll take a shot at us when he finds out Mocker’s after him. Just in case. Wouldn’t you? What’s Elana’s problem?”
“I don’t want anything to do with Fangdred. But, if we’re going to get killed anyway, it might as well be facing the enemy. I guess she’s worried about Nepanthe. They got pretty close.”
Elana wasn’t worrying about Nepanthe. Nepanthe’s predicament had become secondary. Her problem was her newly discovered pregnancy. How could she tell Bragi and not get herself excluded from his plans? She did feel a little guilty, though, because she was concerned with herself when Nepanthe’s problems were so much nastier.
Ragnarson called for more ale, asked the innkeeper, “The man who asked about us. What did he want?”
“Would’na say. Did say ye were friends.”
Ragnarson scratched his beard, which had faded to its normal blondness, and asked, “What was his accent?”
“No need to go on about it. He’s here.”
Haroun glanced up from his drink. Ragnarson turned…
The latter dove to his left, stretched out like a man plunging into water. He rolled, tripped Yalmar intentionally, shouted, “Elana!” Bin Yousif rolled into cover behind a table Bragi was overturning, thundered, “Haaken! Reskird!”
Four men in monkish garb halted in the doorway, startled by the explosive reaction to their appearance. One suddenly fell to his knees, tripped from behind. Before he could rise, a hand was beneath his chin and a blade across his throat. Both were Elana’s. In hard tones she told the others, “Turran’s dead if anybody even twitches!”
They believed her. They might have been stone for all the life they showed.
Ragnarson, slipping from table to table in a crouch, reached a rack where swords hung, tossed one to bin Yousif, drew another for himself, and moved toward the door. A rapid clumping came from the stairs. Blackfang and K
ildragon, half dressed, arrived. They took stations to either side of Elana.
Ragnarson and bin Yousif closed in.
Rolf Preshka appeared behind the Storm Kings, sword in hand. “Damn!” he grumbled. “Jumped out that window for nothing. Ah. Nothing like old friends dropping in.” He stared at the four both with frank curiosity and wry amusement.
Elsewhere, the innkeeper made the safety of his serving counter, like a curious owl paused to watch from its cover. He had been schooled well by his long proprietorship. The Red Hart had the most unsavory reputation in all Itaskia.
“You react quickly,” said Turran. “Might almost think you had guilty consciences.” Though he spoke lightly, there was fear in his eyes. “No need for this. We’re unarmed.”
“Said the sorcerer, laughing,” bin Yousif muttered. “Do you keep your lightning bolts in scabbards now?”
“Sorry,” Ragnarson apologized, not meaning it at all. “We’re expecting trouble.” His eyes flicked over the four, assessing. “But not from you. Let’s move to a table.” A moment later the four were seated, surrounded by the six, and a pitcher was on its way. “What do you want?” Ragnarson growled.
“To talk to Saltimbanco,” said Turran.
“Mocker,” Kildragon interjected.
“Saltimbanco, Mocker, that’s neither here nor there. He was Saltimbanco to us, but we’ll call him Mocker if you want. We want to see him. About Nepanthe.”