She turned away from the window. "Anyway, I am full, and tired. But there is more than that." Both knife-edged arms crossed in front of the green thorax, and the decorated head rested on the crux they formed, producing a frozen image of an insectoid odalisque.
"I am worried."
"Worried, Your Majesty?" Kesylict scuttled into the chamber, though taking care to try and remain unobtrusively out of her reach. One could not escape the lightning-swift grasp of the mantis unless one remained beyond its range. So Kesylict approached no closer than protocol demanded. None could tell when the mercurial desires of the Empress might change from a request for advice to a craving for dessert.
"What could possibly be enough to worry Your Majesty? The preparations?" He waved toward the far window. Outside and below were the busy streets of Cugluch, capital of the Empire of the Chosen, their most powerful city. Teeming thousands of dedicated citizens dutifully slaved for the glory of their Empress and their society. Their own lives were filled with the shared glory of their race, and each lowly worker was ready to share in the coming conquests. Preparations were proceeding with the usual efficiency.
"We ready ourselves better than ever before in the history of the Empire, and this time we cannot fail, Majesty."
"There has been no trouble with the stores?"
"None, Majesty." Kesylict sounded genuinely concerned. Though fearful for his personal safety, he was nevertheless a loyal and devoted servant of his Empress, and she did indeed seem worried.
"The training and mobilization also proceeds smoothly. Every day more grubs shed their larval skin and develop arms and the desire to bear weapons. Never has our army been as powerful, never has the desire of its troops been greater. Not one but three great armies stand ready and anxious for the ultimate assault on the lands to the west. Victory is within our grasp. Or so generals Mordeesha and Evaloc have been saying for over a year now. The whole Empire pulses with desire and readiness for battle.
"Yet by wisdom we wait, grow stronger still, so that we can now overwhelm the hated soft ones with but a third of our strength."
She sighed, a low hiss. "Still, we have many thousands of years of failure behind us to show the folly of brave words. I will not give the order to move unless I am certain of success, Kesylict." Her head twitched to one side and she used an arm to clean a bulging eye.
"No trouble then with the Manifestation?"
"Why, no, Majesty." Kesylict was appalled at the thought. For all his talk of strength and desire, he knew that the Empress and general staff were pinning their ultimate hopes on the Manifestation.
"What could be wrong with it?"
She shook a cautionary claw at him. "Where magic is involved, anything is possible. This development is so different it frightens even Eejakrat, who is responsible for it. The greatest care must be exercised to insure its safety and surroundings."
"So it has been, Majesty. Any unauthorized who have come within a hundred zequets of it have been killed, their bodies buried without even the meat being consumed. Greater security has never been exercised in the whole history of the Empire." He peered hard at her.
"Even still, my Majesty worries?"
"Even still." She made as if to rise from her squat. Kesylict took a nervous step backward. She gestured casually, slowly, with an armored arm.
"Be at ease, my valued servant. I am sated physically. It is my mind that hungers for surcease, and your counsel that I require. Not your meat."
"Gladly will I offer my poor advice to Your Majesty."
"This is not for you alone, Kesylict. Summon High General Mordeesha and the sorcerer Eejakrat. I have need of their thoughts as well."
"It will be done, Your Majesty." The Minister turned, his cushioned shoes scraping on the extruded stone floor. He was grateful for the respite but at the same time concerned for the health of his Empress.
Everything was going so well. What could possibly have happened to upset her to the point where she was worried about the outcome of the Great Enterprise?
Later, squatting with the others, Kesylict felt by far the most vulnerable, to both physical abuse and criticism.
To his left rested the heavily armored and aged beetle shape of High General Mordeesha. Battle armor drooped from his soft under-body. Insignia of rank and the less symmetrical wounds of war were cut into his thick dorsal wing covers. Sharp curving horns made of metal protruded from the helmet that fit over his own horny skull. Sweeping metal flanges shielded his eyes.
From his neck hung tiny skulls and teeth taken from the corpses of those the General had personally vanquished. They clanked hollowly against his metal thorax plate as he shifted his position.
Nearby was the Grand Sorcerer Eejakrat, a thin, delicate insect-specter. Pure white enamel decorated his wing cases and chitin. Strings of long white and silver beads dangled fringelike from both sides of his maxilla. An artificial white and silver crest ran from his forehead down between the dark compound eyes to disappear in the middle of his back. It included his insignia of office, of wisdom and knowledge, and marked him as the manipulator of magic most exalted.
Alongside the General, whose great physical skills could crush him easily, and Eejakrat, whose arcane abilities could turn him back into a grub, the Minister felt very inadequate indeed. Yet he squatted in the audience chamber amid the glittering gems and thousand shafts of light they threw back from the dozens of candles and the crystal candelabra overhead, as an equal with the others. For Kesylict possessed an extraordinary reservoir of common sense, an ability most Plated Folk lacked. It was for this that the Empress valued him so much, as a counterweight to the blind drive of the General and the intricate machinations of the Sorcerer.
"We've heard about your distress, Majesty," said the General tactfully. "Is it so important that you must summon us to council now? The critical time nears. Drill and redrill are required more than ever."
"I wish, though," responded Eejakrat in a voice that was almost a whisper between his mandibles, "I could persuade you to wait at least another year, General. I am not yet confident enough master over the Manifestation."
"Wait and wait," grumbled the General, skulls tinkling against his thorax. "We've waited more than a year already. Always building, always preparing, always strengthening our reserves. But there comes a time, good brother, much as I respeet your learning, when even a soldier as unthinkingly devoted as those of the Empire grows over-drilled and loses that keen edge for slaughter his officer has worked so long and hard to instill in him. The army cannot retain itself at fever-ready forever.
"Probably we will overwhelm the soft ones by sheer weight of numbers this time, and will have no need of your obscure learning. You can then relax in your old age and toy with this wonder you have conjured up. The final victory shall be ours no matter what."
The General's voice trembled at the thought of the Great Conquest awaiting him, a conquest that would alter forever the history of the world.
"Even so," said the Sorcerer softly, "you are glad to have both my old age and my wonder in reserve, since in twenty thousand years we have shown ourselves unable to defeat the soft ones, despite all our preparations and boastings."
As always, the General was ready to reply. Skrritch waved a knife-studded green arm. The movement was slow to her, awesomely fast to her attendants. They quieted, waited respectfully for what she might say.
"I have not called you here to discuss timing or tactics, but to listen to a memory of a dream." She gazed at Mordeesha. "In dreams, General, it is Eejakrat who is master. But I may want your opinion nonetheless." Obediently the General bowed low.
"I am no jealous fool, Majesty. Now, of all times, we must put aside petty rivalries to work for the greater glory of Cugluch. I will give my opinion if it is asked for, and I will defer to my colleague's ancient wisdom." He nodded to Eejakrat.
"A wise one knows his own limitations," observed a satisfied Eejakrat. "Describe the dream, Majesty."
"I was rest
ing in the bedchamber," she began slowly, "half asleep from the orgy of mating and conversing with my most recent mate preparatory to his ritual dispatching, when I felt a great unease. It was as if many hidden eyes were spying upon me. They were alien eyes, and they burned. Hot and horribly moist they felt. I believed they were seeing into my very insides.
"I gave a violent start, or so my attending mate later said, and struck violently, instinctively, at the empty air. The cushions and pillows of my boudoir are flayed like the underbellies of a dozen slaves because I struggled so fiercely against nothingness.
"For an instant I seemed to see my tormentors. They had shape and yet no shape, form without substance. I screamed aloud and they vanished. Awake, I flew into a frustrated rage from which I have only just recovered." She looked anxiously at Eejakrat.
"Sorcerer, what does this portend?"
Eejakrat located a clean place amid the royal droppings and rested on his hind legs. The tip of his abdomen barely touched the floor. Minims, foot-long subservitors, busied themselves cleaning his chitin.
"Your Majesty worries overmuch on nothing." He shrugged and waved a thin hand. "It may only have been a bad hallucination. You have so much on your mind these days that such upsets are surprising only in that you have not experienced many before this. In the afterdaze of postcoital subsidence such imaginings are only to be expected."
Skrritch nodded and began to clean her other eye, shooing away the distraught minims. "Always the soft ones have managed to defeat us in battle." General Mordeesha shifted uncomfortably.
"They are fast and strong. Most of all, they are clever. We lose not because our troops lack strength or courage but because we lack imagination in war. Perhaps my imagining is, after all, a good sign. Do not look so uncomfortable, General. You are about to receive the word you have waited for for so long.
"I believe the time has come to move." Mordeesha looked excited. "Yes, General. You may inform the rest of the staff to begin final preparations."
"Majesty," put in Eejakrat, "I would very much like another six months to study the ramifications of the Manifestation. I do not understand it well enough yet."
"You will have some time yet, my good advisor," she told him, "because it will take a while to get so vast an enterprise in motion. But General Mordeesha's words concerning the morale and readiness of the troops must be acknowledged. Without that, all your magic will do us no good."
"I will give you all the time I can, wizard," said Mordeesha. "I wish your support." His eyes glittered in the candlelight as he rose to a walking position. He bowed once more.
"By your leave, Majesty, I will retire now and initiate preparations. There is a great deal to do."
"Stay a moment, General." She turned her attention to the sorcerer. "Eejakrat, I like not rushing the wise ones among us who serve with you in this great undertaking. We have been defeated in the past because we acted without patience or stealth. But I feel the time is right, and Mordeesha concurs. I want you to understand I am not favoring his advice over yours." She looked at Kesylict.
"I am neither general nor wizard, Majesty," the Minister told her, "but my instincts say, 'act now.' It is the mood of the workers as well."
Eejakrat sighed. "Let it be so, then. As to the dream-hallucination, Majesty... there are many masters of magic among the soft ones. We can despise them for their bodies but not for their minds. Perhaps I am paranoid with our plans so near fruition, but it is not inconceivable that the shapes you think were watching you were knowledgeable ones among the soft folk. Though," he admitted, "I know of no wizardry power strong enough to reach all the way from the warm-lands to Cugluch and then penetrate the Veils of Confusion and Conflict I have drawn about the Manifestation. Nevertheless, I shall try to learn more about what occurred.
"If that happened to be true, however, it means that the sooner we act the surer we shall be of surprise and victory." He turned to the General. "See, Mordeesha, how my thoughts give support to your desires against my own hopes. Perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps I grow overcautious in my old age.
"If you are ready, if the armies are ready, then I will force myself to be ready also. To the final glory, then?"
"To the final glory," they all recited in unison.
Skrritch turned, pulled a cord. Three servitors appeared. Each carried a freshly detached, dripping limb from some unfortunate, unseen source. These were distributed. The four in council sucked out the contents of the arms by way of mutual congratulations.
They then took their leave, the General to his staff meeting, Eejakrat to his quarters to ponder a possible impossible mental intrusion into Cugluch, and Kesylict to arrange the mundane matters of mealtimes and official appointments for the following day.
The Minister had good reason to ponder the Empress' words concerning the notorious cleverness of the soft ones. By such similar adroitness had he retained his head upon his neck, even to agreeing with the others that the time to move had arrived. Privately he thought Eejakrat should be given all the time he wished. Kesylict had read the forbidden records, knew the litany of failure of past battles with the soft ones. So while he was as ignorant of the complexities of the Manifestation as any of the Royal Council, he knew that in Eejakrat's manipulation of it lay the Plated Folk's hopes for final victory over their ancient enemies, and not in General Mordeesha's boasts of superior military strength.
Alone, Skrritch pulled a second call cord. A servitor appeared with a tall, narrow-spouted drinking vessel. The Empress washed down the remnants of the recent toast, then turned and stared once more out the window.
Thickening mist obscured even the ramparts of the Keep. The city of Cugluch and its milling thousands were blotted out as though they did not exist. Day turned toward night as the mist and fog grew darker, indicating the down passage of the sun.
Mordeesha and his fellow generals had been chafing at the bit for several laying periods. She had held off as long as possible in order to give Eejakrat still more time to study his Manifestation. But knowing the wizard, such study could go on forever.
The elastic of patience had been broken now. Soon the word would spread throughout the Greendowns that the war had begun.
For an instant she thought again of the disturbing dream. Perhaps it had been no more than a daymare. Even empresses were subjeet to strain. Eejakrat did not seem overly concerned about it, so there was no reason for it to continue to trouble her thoughts.
There were promotions and demotions to be bestowed, executions to order, punishments to decide, and rewards to be handed out. Tomorrow's court schedule, so ably organized by the prosaic Kesylict, was quite full.
Such everyday activities seemed superfluous, now that the first steps toward final victory had been initiated. She savored the thought. Of all the emperors and empresses of the far-flung Empire she would be the first to stride possessively through the gentle lands of the soft ones, the first to bring back plunder and thousands of slaves from the other side of the world.
And after that, what might she not accomplish? Even Eejakrat had voiced thoughts about the possibilities the Manifestation might create. Such possibilities extended beyond the bounds of a single world.
She turned on her side and leaned back against a hundred glowing red rubies and crimson cushions. Her ambition was as boundless as the universe, as far-reaching as Eejakrat's magic. She could hardly wait for the war to begin. Glory would accrue to her and to Cugluch. With the wizard's assistance why should she not become Empress of the Universe, supreme ruler of as yet unknown beyonds and their inhabitants?
Yes, she would have the exquisite pleasure of presiding over destruction and conquest instead of records and stupid, fawning, peaceful citizens. Cugluch was on the march, as it should be. Only this tune it would swell and grow instead of sputtering to an ignominious halt!
The hallucination faded until it was only an amusing and insignificant memory....
XV
Jon-Tom was split down the middle. Half
of him was cool and damp from the early morning mist. The other side was warm and dry, almost hot with the weight leaning against it.
He opened his eyes with that first lethargic movement of awakening and saw a white-and-black-clad form snuggled close against his own. Flor's long black hair lay draped over his shoulder. Her head was nestled in the crook of his left arm.
Instead of moving and waking her, he used the time to study that perfect, silent face. She looked so different, so childlike in sleep. Further to his left slumbered the silent shape of the wizard.
With his head and limbs retracted Clothahump was a boulderish form near a clump of bushes. Jon-Tom started to look back down at his sleeper when he became aware of movement just behind him. Startled, he reached automatically for his war staff.
"Rest easy, Jon-Tom." The voice was less reassuring than the words it spoke. Talea moved down beside him, staring morosely at the recumbent couple. "If I murder you, Jon-Tom, it won't ever be in your sleep." She stepped lithely over them both and trotted over to Clothahump.
She bent and rapped unceremoniously on the shell. "Wake up, wizard!"
A head soon appeared, followed by a pair of arms. One hand held a pair of spectacles which were promptly secured before the turtle's eyes. Then the legs appeared. After resting a moment on all fours, the wizard pushed back into a squat, then stood.
"I am not accustomed," he began huffily, "to being awakened in so brusque a fashion, young lady. If I were of less understanding a mind..."
"Save it," she said, "for him." She pointed to the unsteady shape of Pog. The sleepy bat was fluttering awkwardly over to attend to his master's early morning needs. He'd been sleeping in the branches of the great oak overhead.
"What's da matter?" he asked tiredly. "What's all da uproar? Can't ya let a person sleep?"
"C'mon," Talea said curtly, "everybody up." She looked back at Jon-Tom, and he wondered at something he thought he saw in her gaze. "Well," she asked him, "are you two going to join this little session or aren't you? Or do you intend to spend the rest of your life practicing to be a pillow?"