Tran could only get himself killed.
“Please, Tran. It’s over. There’s nothing you can do. I’m dead.”
The hunter reflected. His thoughts were shaped by forest life. He decided.
Some might have called him coward. But Tran’s people were realists. He would be useless to anyone hanging from a spike which had been driven into the base of his skull, while hisentrails hung out and his hands and feet lay on the ground before him.
He grabbed Lang and ran.
No one pursued him.
He stopped running once he reached cover.
He watched.
The soldiers shed their armor.
They had to be following orders. They didn’t rape and plunder like foreign barbarians. They did what they were told, and only what they were told, and their service was reward enough.
The woman’s screams ripped the afternoon air.
They didn’t kill Tam, just made him watch.
In all things there are imponderables, intangibles, and unpredicatables. The most careful plan cannot account for every minuscule factor. The greatest necromancer cannot divine precisely enough to define the future till it becomes predestined. In every human enterprise the planners and seers deal with and interpret only the things they know. Then they usually interpret incorrectly.
But, then, even the gods are fallible. For who created Man?
Some men call the finagle factor Fate.
The five who had gone to the Hag’s hut became victims of the unpredictable.
Tam whimpered in their grasp, remembering the security of his mother’s arms when wolf calls tormented the night and chill north winds whipped their little fire’s flames. He remembered and wept. And he remembered the name Nu Li Hsi.
The forest straddled Shinsan’s frontier with Han Chin, which was more a tribal territory than established state. The Han Chin generally tried not to attract attention, but sometimes lacked restraint.
There were a hundred raiders in the party which attacked the five. Forty-three didn’t live to see home again. That was why the world so feared the soldiers of Shinsan.
The survivors took Tam with them believing anyone important to the legionnaires must be worth a ransom.
Nobody made an offer.
The Han Chin taught the boy fear. They made of him a slave and toy, and when it was their mood to amuse themselves with howls, they tortured him.
They didn’t know who he was, but he was of Shinsan and helpless. That was enough.
There was a new man among those who met, though only he, Chin, and Ko Feng knew. It was ever thus with the Nines. Some came, some went. Few recognized the changes.
The conspiracy was immortal.
“There’s a problem,” Chin told his audience. “The Han Chin have captured our candidate. The western situation being tense, this places a question before the Nine.”
Chin had had his instructions. “The Princes Thaumaturge have chivvied Varthlokkur till his only escape can be to set the west aflame. I suggest we suborn the scheme and assume it for our own, nudging at the right moment, till it can rid us of the Princes. Come. Gather round. I want to repeat a divination.”
He worked with the deftness of centuries of experience, nursing clouds from a tiny brazier. They boiled up and turned in upon themselves, not a wisp escaping. Tiny lightning bolts ripped through....
“Trela stri! Sen me stri!” Chin commanded. “Azzari an walla in walli stri!”
The cloud whispered in the same tongue. Chin gave instructions in his own language. “The fate, again, of the boy....”
That which lived beyond the cloud muttered something impatient.
It flicked over the past, showing them the familiar tale of Varthlokkur, and showed them that wizard’s future, and the future of the boy who dwelt with the Han Chin. Nebulously. The thing behind the cloud could not, or would not, define the parameters.
There were those imponderables, intangibles, and unpredicatables.
As one, Chin’s associates sighed.
“The proposal before us is this: Do we concentrate on shaping these destinies to our advantage? For a time the west would demand our complete attention. The yield? Our goals achieved at a tenth the price anticipated.”
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. Tarn 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.
TWO: Mocker
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.”
r />
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 triedworked. 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 as tall and pale and cool. Almost regal.
Nepanthe had, for this evening, summoned all the aristo-cratic 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 himmore 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 burglary, 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 grey there, and maybe more tummy, but I don’t see a whit’s difference in the man inside.” He eyed Nepanthe. There 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 grey 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 representa-tives 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. Desolation 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 Wiza
rds 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 fool headedness. 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 bygreat 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....