The vote was unanimous.
Chin made a sign before the Nine departed.
The one who remained was different. Chin said, “Lord Wu, you’re our brother in the east. The boy will be your concern. Prepare him to assume his father’s throne.”
Wu bowed.
Once Wu departed, that secret door opened. “Excellent,” said the bent old man. “Everything is going perfectly. I congratulate you. You’re invaluable to the Pracchia. We’ll call you to meet the others soon.”
Chin’s hidden eyes narrowed. His Nine-mask, arrogantly, merely reversed his Tervola mask. The others wore masks meant to conceal identities. Chin was mocking everyone…
Again the old man departed wearing a small, secretive smile.
Tam was nine when Shinsan invaded Han Chin. It was a brief little war, though bloody. A handful of sorcerer’s apprentices guided legionnaires to the hiding places of the natives, who quickly died.
The man in the woods didn’t understand.
For four years Tran had watched and waited. Now he moved. He seized Tam and fled to the cave where he lived with Lang.
The soldiers came next morning.
Tran wept. “It isn’t fair,” he whispered. “It just isn’t fair.” He prepared to die fighting.
A thin man in black, wearing a golden locust mask, entered the circle of soldiers. “This one?” He indicated Tam.
“Yes, Lord Wu.”
Wu faced Tam, knelt. “Greetings, Lord.” He used words meaning Lord of Lords. O Shing. It would become a title. “My Prince.”
Tran, Lang, Tam stared. What insanity was this?
“Who are the others?” Wu asked, rising.
“The child of the woman, Lord. They believe themselves brothers. The other calls himself Tran. One of the forest people. The woman’s lover. He protected the boy the best he could the past four years. A good and faithful man.”
“Do him honor, then. Place him at O Shing’s side.” Again that Lord of Lords, so sudden and confusing.
Tran didn’t relax.
Wu asked him, “You know me?”
“No.”
“I am Wu, of the Tervola. Lord of Liaontung and Yan-lin Kuo, and now of Han Chin. My legion is the Seventeenth. The Council has directed me to recover the son of the Dragon Prince.”
Tran remained silent. He didn’t trust himself. Tam looked from one man to the other.
“The boy with the handicaps. He’s the child of Nu Li Hsi. The woman kidnapped him the day of his birth. Those who came before… They were emissaries of his father.”
Tran said nothing, though he knew the woman’s tale.
Wu was impatient with resistance. “Disarm him,” he ordered. “Bring him along.”
The soldiers did it in an instant, then took the three to Wu’s citadel at Liaontung.
T
WO:
S
PRING, 1010 AFE
M
OCKER
These things sometimes begin subtly. For Mocker it started when a dream came true.
Dream would become nightmare before week’s end.
He had an invitation to Castle Krief. He. Mocker. The fat little brown man whose family lived in abject poverty in a Vorgreberg slum, who, himself, scrabbled for pennies on the fringes of the law. The invitation had so delighted him that he actually had swallowed his pride and allowed his friend the Marshall to loan him money.
He arrived at the Palace gate grinning from one plump brown ear to the other, his invitation clutched in one hand, his wife in the other.
“Self, am convinced old friend Bear gone soft behind eyes, absolute,” he told Nepanthe. “Inviting worst of worse, self. Not so, wife of same, certitude. Hai! Maybeso, high places lonely. Pacificity like cancer, eating silent, sapping manhood. Calls in old friend of former time, hoping rejuvenation of spirit.”
He had been all mouth since the invitation had come, though, briefly, he had been suicidally down. The Marshall of all Kavelin inviting somebody like him to the Victory Day celebrations? A mockery. It was some cruel joke…
“Quit bubbling and bouncing,” his wife murmured. “Want them to think you’re some drunken street rowdy?”
“Heart’s Desire. Doe’s Eyes. Is truth, absolute. Am same. Have wounds to prove same. Scars. Count them…”
She laughed. And thought, I’ll give Bragi a hug that’ll break his ribs.
It seemed ages since they had been this happy, an eon since laughter had tickled her tonsils and burst past her lips against any ability to control.
Fate hadn’t been kind to them. Nothing Mocker tried worked. Or, if it did, he would suffer paroxysms of optimism, begin gambling,
sure
he’d make a killing, and would lose everything.
Yet they had their love. They never lost that, even when luck turned its worst. Inside the tiny, triangular cosmos described by them and their son, an approach to perfection remained.
Physically, the years had treated Nepanthe well. Though forty-one, she still looked to be in her early thirties. The terrible cruelty of her poverty had ravaged her spirit more than her flesh.
Mocker was another tale. Most of his scars had been laid on by the fists and knives of enemies. He was indomitable, forever certain of his high destiny.
The guard at the Palace gate was a soldier of the new national army. The Marshall had been building it since his victory at Baxendala. The sentry was a polite young man of Wesson ancestry who needed convincing that at least one of them wasn’t a party crasher.
“Where’s your carriage?” he asked. “Everyone comes in a carriage.”
“Not all of us can afford them. But my husband was one of the heroes of the war.” Nepanthe did Mocker’s talking when clarity was essential. “Isn’t the invitation valid?”
“Yes. All right. He can go in. But who are you?” The woman before him was tall and pale and cool. Almost regal.
Nepanthe had, for this evening, summoned all the aristocratic bearing that had been hers before she had been stricken by love for the madman she had married… Oh, it seemed ages ago, now.
“His wife. I said he was my husband.”
The soldier had all a Kaveliner’s ethnic consciousness. His surprise showed.
“Should we produce marriage papers? Or would you rather he went and brought the Marshall to vouch for me?” Her voice was edged with sarcasm that cut like razors. She could make of words lethal weapons.
Mocker just stood there grinning, shuffling restlessly.
The Marshall did have strange friends. The soldier had been with the Guard long enough to have seen several stranger than these. He capitulated. He was only a trooper. He didn’t get paid to think. Somebody would throw them out if they didn’t belong.
And, in the opinion locked behind his teeth, they pleased him more than some of the carriage riders he had admitted earlier. Some of those were men whose throats he would have cut gladly.
Those two from Hammad al Nakir… They were ambassadors of a nation which cheerfully would have devoured his little homeland.
They had more trouble at the citadel door, but the Marshall had foreseen it. His aide appeared, vouchsafed their entry.
It grated a little, but Nepanthe held her tongue.
Once, if briefly, she had been mistress of a kingdom where Kavelin would have made but a modest province.
Mocker didn’t notice. “Dove’s Breast. Behold. Inside of Royal Palace. And am invited. Self. Asked in. In time past, have been to several, dragged in bechained, or breaked—broked— whatever word is for self-instigated entry for purpose of burgurgalry, or even invited round to back-alley door to discuss deed of dastardness desired done by denizen of same. Invited? As honored guest? Never.”
The Marshall’s aide, Gjerdrum Eanredson, laughed, slapped the fat man’s shoulder. “You just don’t change, do you? Six, seven years it’s been. You’ve got a little gray there, and maybe more tummy, but I don’t see a whit’s difference in the man inside.” He eyed Nepanthe. Th
ere was, briefly, that in his eye which said he appreciated what he saw.
“But you’ve changed, Gjerdrum,” she said, and the lilt of her voice told him his thoughts had been divined. “What happened to that shy boy of eighteen?”
Gjerdrum’s gaze flicked to Mocker, who was bemused by the opulence of his surroundings, to the deep plunge of her bodice, to her eyes. Without thinking he wet his lips with his tongue and, red-faced, stammered, “I guess he growed up…”
She couldn’t resist teasing him, flirting. As he guided them to the Great Hall she asked leading questions about his marital status and which of the court ladies were his mistresses. She had him thoroughly flustered when they arrived.
Nepanthe held this moment in deep dread. She had even tried to beg off. But now a thrill coursed through her. She was glad she had come. She pulled a handful of long straight black hair forward so it tumbled down her bare skin, drawing the eye and accenting her cleavage.
For a while she felt nineteen again.
The next person she recognized was the Marshall’s wife, Elana, who was waiting near the door. For an instant Nepanthe was afraid. This woman, who once had been her best friend, might not be pleased to see her.
But, “Nepanthe!” The red-haired woman engulfed her in an embrace that banished all misgivings.
Elana loosed her and repeated the display with Mocker. “God, Nepanthe, you look good. How do you do it? You haven’t aged a second.”
“Skilled artificer, self, magician of renown, having at hand secret of beauty of women of fallen Escalon, most beautiful of all time before fall, retaining light of teenage years into fifth decade, provide potations supreme against ravishes—ravages?—of Time,” Mocker announced solemnly—then burst into laughter. He hugged Elana back, cunningly grasping a handful of derriere, then skipped round her in a mad, whirling little dance.
“It’s him,” Elana remarked. “For a minute I didn’t recognize him. He had his mouth shut. Come on. Come on. Bragi will be so glad to see you again.”
Time hadn’t used Elana cruelly either. Only a few gray wisps threaded her coppery hair, and, despite having borne many children, her figure remained reasonably trim. Nepanthe remarked on it.
“True artifice, that,” Elana confessed. “None of your hedge-wizard mumbo jumbo. These clothes—they come all the way from Sacuescu. The Queen’s father sends them with hers. He has hopes for his next visit.” She winked. “They push me up here, flatten me here, firm me up back there. I’m a mess undressed.” Though she tried valiantly to conceal it, Elana’s words expressed a faint bitterness.
“Time is great enemy of all,” Mocker observed. “Greatest evil of all. Devours all beauty. Destroys all hope.” In his words, too, there was attar of wormwood. “Is Eater, Beast That Lies Waiting. Ultimate Destroyer.” He told the famous riddle.
There were people all around them now, nobles of Kavelin, Colonels of the Army and Mercenaries’ Guild, and representatives from the diplomatic community. Merriment infested the hall. Men who were deadly enemies the rest of the year shared in the celebration as though they were dear friends—because they had shared hardship under the shadow of the wings of Death that day long ago when they had set aside their contentiousness and presented a common front to the Dread Empire—and had defeated the invincible.
There were beautiful women there, too, women the like of which Mocker knew only in dreams. Of all the evidences of wealth and power they impressed him most.
“Scandalous,” he declared. “Absolute. Desolution overtakes. Decadence descends. Sybariticism succeeds. O Sin, thy Name is Woman… Self, will strive bravely, but fear containment of opinion will be impossible of provision. May rise to speechify same, castrating—no, castigating—assembly for wicked life. Shame!” He leered at a sleek, long-haired blonde who, simply by existing, turned his spine to jelly. Then he faced his wife, grinning. “Remember passage in
Wizards of Ilkazar,
in list of sins of same? Be great fundament for speech, eh? No?”
Nepanthe smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think this’s the place. Or the time. They might think you’re serious.”
“Money here. Look. Self, being talker of first water, spins web of words. In this assemblage famous law of averages declares must exist one case of foolheadedness. Probably twenty-three. Hai! More. Why not? Think big. Self, being student primus of way of spider, pounce. Ensnare very gently, unlike spider, and, also unlike same, drain very slow.”
Elana, too, shook her head. “Hasn’t changed a bit. Not at all. Nepanthe, you’ve got to tell me all about it. What have you been doing? How’s Ethrian? Do you know how much trouble it was to find you? Valther used half his spies. Had them looking everywhere. And there you were in the Siluro quarter all the time. Why didn’t you keep in touch?”
At that moment the Marshall, Bragi Ragnarson, spied them. He spared Nepanthe an answer.
“Mocker!” he thundered, startling half the hall into silence. He abandoned the lords he had been attending. “Yah! Lard Bottom!” He threw a haymaker. The fat man ducked and responded with a blur of a kick that swept the big man’s feet from beneath him.
Absolute silence gripped the hall. Nearly three hundred men, plus servants and women, stared.
Mocker extended a hand. And shook his head as he helped the Marshall rise. “Self, must confess to one puzzlement. One only, and small. But is persistent as buzzing of mosquito.”
“What’s that?” Ragnarson, standing six-five, towered over the fat man.
“This one tiny quandary. Friend Bear, ever clumsy, unable to defend self from one-armed child of three, is ever chosen by great ones to defend same from foes of mighty competence. Is poser. Sorcery? Emboggles mind of self.”
“Could be. But you’ve got to admit I’m lucky.”
“Truth told.” He said it sourly, and didn’t expand. Luck, Mocker believed, was his nemesis. The spiteful hag had taken a dislike to him the moment of his birth… But his day was coming. The good fortune was piling up. When it broke loose…
In truth, luck had less to do with his misfortunes than did compulsive gambling and an iron-hard refusal to make his way up by any socially acceptable means.
This crude little brown man, from the worst slum of the Siluro ghetto, had had more fortunes rush through his fingers than most of the lords present. Once he had actually laid hands on the fabled treasure of Ilkazar.
He wouldn’t invest. He refused. Someday, he knew, the dice would fall his way.
The fat man’s old friend, with whom, in younger days, he had enjoyed adventures that would’ve frightened their present companions bald, guided him onto the raised platform from which his approach had been spotted. Mocker began shaking. A moment’s clowning, down there, was embarrassing enough. But to be dragged before the multitudes…
He barely noticed the half-dozen men who shared the dais with the Marshall. One eyed him as would a man who spotted someone he thinks he recognizes after decades.
“Quiet!” Ragnarson called. “A little quiet here!”
While the amused-to-disgusted chatter died, Mocker considered his friend’s apparel. So rich. Fur-edged cape. Blouse of silk. Hose that must cost more than
he
scrounged in a month… He remembered when this man had worn bearskins.
Once silence gained a hold, Ragnarson announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce somebody. A man I tracked down at considerable inconvenience and expense because he’s the critical element that has been missing from our Victory Day celebrations. He was one of the unspoken heroes who guided us up the road to Baxendala, one of the men whose quiet pain and sacrifice made victory possible.” Ragnarson held Mocker’s hand high. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world’s foremost authority.”
Puzzled, the ambassador from Altea asked, “Authority on what?”
Ragnarson grinned, punched Mocker’s arm. “Everything.”
Mocker had never been one to remain embarrassed long. Especially by publi
c acclaim. He had forever been his own greatest booster. But here, because he had a predisposition to expect it, he suspected he was being mocked. He flashed his friend a look of appeal.
Which, despite years of separation, Ragnarson read. Softly, he replied, “No. I didn’t bring you here for that. This’s a homecoming. A debut. Here’s an audience. Take them.”
The wicked old grin seared the fat man’s face. He turned to the crowd, fearing them no more. They would be his toys. Boldly, insolently, he examined the people nearest the dais. The merry mayhem in his eyes sparkled so that each of them recognized it. Most perked to a higher level of gaiety ere he spoke a word.
He founded the speech on the passage from the epic, and spoke with such joy, such laughter edging his voice, that hardly anyone resented being roasted.
The years had taught him something. He was no longer indiscreet. Though his tongue rolled inspiredly, in a high, mad babble that made the chandeliers rattle with the responding laughter, he retained sufficient command of his inspiration that, while he accused men of every dark deed under the sun, he never indicted anyone for something whispered to be true.
In the Siluro quarter, where dwelt the quiet little men who performed the drudgework of civil service and the mercantile establishments, there were few secrets about the mighty.
He finished with a prophecy not unlike that of the poet. Punctuation, hellfire and brimstone.
And envoi, “Choice is clear. Recant. Renounce high living. Shed sybaritic ways. Place all burden of sin on one able to bear up under curse of same.” He paused to meet eyes, including those of the sleek blonde twice. Then, softly, seriously, “Self, would volunteer for job.”
Bragi slapped his back. People who remembered Mocker now, from the war, came to greet him and, if possible, swap a few lies about the old days. Others, including that svelte blonde, came to praise his performance.
Mocker was disappointed by the blonde. There was a message in her eyes, and nothing he could do.
“Oh, my,” he muttered. “That this obesity should live to see day…” But he wasn’t distraught. This was his happiest evening in a decade. He wallowed in it, savoring every instant.