Emperor Mage

  The emperor’s face appeared under the foot of the bed. “There you are.” Fire collected at his hand, and lashed forward.

  The time to think was past. The marmoset raced from under the bed, scrambled up the hanging. Emerald fire lashed the cloth below. It burst into flame. Zek jumped into the vent and found himself in a long, dark tunnel not much bigger than he was. Turning, he saw that the tunnel ended nearby in an opening with a fine screen over it: no escape that way.

  “Where are you, little rat?” he heard Ozorne say. Zek fled down the long end of the tunnel, into the palace depths.

  Daine continued to dream after that, funny images that had little in common with the dreams she was used to. She wondered if she ought to complain to whoever was in charge of these things, but Gainel, the Master of Dream, was not one of the easily found gods. With no one to protest to, she paid attention once more to the dreams.

  Guards formed a square around the Tortallans, marching them to a waiting ferry. Alanna walked grim-faced behind the covey of clerks, eyes watching everywhere. Duke Gareth, Lord Martin, and Gareth the Younger kept their heads together, whispering urgently. Harailt gripped one of Numair’s arms, talking fast as he half trotted beside the much taller man. Daine wondered at the look on Numair’s face. His nostrils and lips were white-rimmed; his eyes blazed. His unfastened robe spread behind him like black wings.

  The scene changed. She was in the immortals’ menagerie, watching as Ozorne himself gently placed the sleeping Kitten on a giant cushion inside a cage. Next to it, flesh-eating unicorns looked on with eyes that blazed hate.

  The next dream was an entire play set in a cramped shipboard cabin. It glowed in the corners with sparkling fire, shielding against eavesdroppers. Harailt, Gareth the Younger, and the clerks were absent. Lord Martin and Duke Gareth were side by side on one of the bunks, watching Numair on the other. Lindhall was also present, Bonedancer the lizard-bird on his shoulder; he looked deeply worried. In her dream, Daine was mildly surprised to see that Bone was still awake. She noticed, fascinated, that his empty eye sockets followed each speaker.

  “Impossible,” Lord Martin said curtly. “Our duty is to return home and warn the king.”

  “She’s one of ours,” retorted Alanna. The Champion leaned against the wall, fisted hands thrust deep into her breeches pockets. “That letter’s a forgery—it must be. He’s keeping her somewhere, and using it as a pretext to end the talks and declare war.”

  Duke Gareth looked at her, eyes sad. “We cannot prove that, my child. Neither can we help Daine; we must warn the country. As it is, Tortall will stand alone against him. By announcing it before the foreign ambassadors, he made certain they believed his proof that Daine conspires against him. As far as our allies are concerned, we caused the talks to fail.”

  “You can warn Tortall, then, and the king,” Numair said quietly. “I won’t leave without her.”

  “We never should have brought that child,” snapped Lord Martin. “I knew it would be trouble!” Standing, he approached the door. “Let me pass,” he ordered. A hole appeared in the magic; he opened the door and left. Once he was gone, the fire sealed the room tightly again.

  “Arram, there is more at stake than any girl, even this one.” Lindhall’s absentminded air was gone. “The information passed to you—contacts, new routes for the slave underground, conspirators’ names—it must go north, now, before the borders are closed by war. We may have to get the prince out in a hurry if the emperor begins to suspect him, and the only way to do it safely is to have all prepared on your end.”

  Numair shook his head. “I don’t care. Someone else can take the information to the king.”

  The Champion whirled and slammed both fists into the wall. “I hate not doing something!” she cried. “I hate it! I want to go back there and—”

  The lizard-bird leaped from his perch on Lindhall, flapping clumsily across the room to land on Alanna’s shoulder. He ran his beak through her hair, trying to comfort her. “Go away, you old Bone,” she whispered, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “You cannot, my dear,” Duke Gareth said, his voice filled with pity. “We are going to war. Your place is at home with the king and his armies.”

  Alanna’s eyes brimmed with tears; she turned away from the men.

  “Numair, if you choose to remain, I cannot stop you—you are too great a mage,” the duke said. “Please think, then. The emperor is mad, but not stupid. He knows you wouldn’t leave Daine here. My concern is that he has planned for just that eventuality.”

  Numair and Lindhall exchanged looks. “I’m aware of the danger, Your Grace,” Numair said quietly. “I have taken precautions. They may be enough. Ozorne has trouble believing in his heart that anyone else has more of the Gift than he does, even when his mind knows there are more powerful mages. I can use that to fool him. As for the knowledge of the prince’s conspiracy—”

  “Give it to me,” Alanna said curtly. “It’s the least I can do.” She handed Bonedancer to Lindhall.

  Numair looked at the duke, who sighed and nodded. Getting up, the tall mage went over to Alanna and placed his fingers on her temples. Black fire sparkled where they touched.

  Daine would have liked to view more, but the dream was pulling her away, and her head ached.

  The dream headache turned into a real one as she awoke. Putting up a hand to shield her eyes from a light-globe overhead, Daine found that she was stiff in places she hadn’t known could get stiff. Arms and legs alike were slow to respond as she sat up and put her feet on the floor.

  Here was a strange thing—she sat on the floor. The bed on which she lay was only a thick pad covered with a blanket. A stack of clean, fresh clothing lay next to the pad.

  As her eyes got used to the light, she realized that she was someplace totally unfamiliar. The room was a box; its white plaster walls, floor, and ceiling were bare of any ornament. Three skins of liquid and a napkin bundle rested beside the pile of clothes. The skins contained water, the napkin stale rolls and grapes. A wooden bucket sat in the corner, she assumed for use as a privy.

  Fear chilled her. The door had no handle or knob. Running her fingers along the frame as high as she could reach, then down to the floor, she sought a lock or latch without success. She stripped off the clothes soiled in the aviary and put on the clean garments. It didn’t escape her attention that they were her own things. She ate the rolls and fruit greedily and could have eaten more. How long had she been asleep? How long would it be until someone let her out?

  Did anyone mean ever to let her out?

  She searched the room, seeking locks, vents, or anything else. Only plaster met her fingers. A year earlier Numair, telling her of his captivity before he’d escaped to Tortall, had said there were rooms under the palace that canceled magic, used from within them or from without. If she was in such a room, Numair, Alanna, and Harailt might seek her with their Gift and never find her. And what about her dreams? Had they been true? Were her friends still in Carthak?

  By then she was trembling. She was caged.

  “I want out,” she whispered. The room was stuffy. She tried to fill her lungs, without success. With no vents, she might run out of air. The walls drew closer. In a moment she would stretch out both arms and be able to touch them— “No!” she screamed, slamming into the door. “No! No!”

  The pain cleared the last traces of drug from her mind, and she could hear her friends outside. Her prison might cancel the Gift, but not wild magic. The People screamed with her, throughout the palace and in the city, over the river. Daine roared her fury. Animals turned on the two-leggers. Dogs set on master, cats the nearest passerby. Birds drove nearby farmers out of their fields. Daine was in all of them, shrieking defiance of cage builders.

  In the palace, dogs and cats leaped for the mage Chioké. He threw up his hands: orange fire lashed, crisping their bodies. Daine shrieked as their agony shot through her.

  “Stop!” she cried to the others. “No, don’t! Stop!
They’ll hurt you, they’ll kill you!”

  A hunter shot his horse with a crossbow; a soldier speared his camel; Ozorne flamed a charging pet monkey. The rest of the People calmed down and hid from sight. Daine collapsed to the mattress and wept. She had gotten her friends killed, and she was still trapped.

  She heard a thump somewhere near, and a click. Taking a deep breath, she shaped herself. Bones shifted. Skin and senses changed swiftly; claws sprouted from paws the size of plates. Daine the bear plodded over to a corner behind the door. Rearing up on her hindquarters, she waited.

  The door opened. A cheetah entered the chamber, with Zek on his back. The marmoset clutched silvery metal in his paws. He looked at the bear, and showed her his prize.

  Keys, Zek said proudly.

  Zek and his new friend, Chirp, the Banjiku performers’ male cheetah, led Daine through the web of branching tunnels under the palace, avoiding humans. At last they came to a round chamber deep underground, where odd-looking signs and runes had been painted on the walls. Tano, Chirp’s trainer, waited there with fruit and water for Daine.

  “It is safe to speak here and to be here,” he told the girl as she ate. He pointed to the signs on the walls. “This is protected place. Slave magic protects here from owner-mages. Tell me what you need, and we will find.”

  She swallowed a mouthful of grapes. “My friends—are they here?”

  He shook his head. “Two days ago emperor say you run off to get slaves to rebel. His warriors take your friends to boat and guard it until they leave. The armies prepare for war. Their great drums pound all night.” He shook his head. “Sleep very bad.”

  She thought over what all of that meant. The armies wouldn’t march; her animal friends would see to that. “I need to talk to Prince Kaddar. Will you trust him if you bring him down here? Or you could blindfold him, if you aren’t sure. But I trust him, if that means anything.”

  Tano nodded. “You will leave this place, go home?”

  “I have to do one or two things, but then I’m going.” Now that she was awake, her dreams felt solid, more like visions than dreams. If that was so, then Numair was here, somewhere. “Tano—I have a message for you, from the first badger. The male badger god. He said to tell the Banjiku that Lushagui never meant for you to be slaves.”

  The black man frowned. “Never?” Daine shook her head. Tano thought this over, pulling thoughtfully on his lower lip. “We must talk about this, the Banjiku. Talk comes later. I go for prince now—you wait.”

  As he trotted away, Chirp curled up next to Daine, while the girl petted Zek. “How did you find the keys?” she asked. “Where were they? How did you know they’d be the right ones?”

  I found the emperor when he went to feed his birds, Zek replied, nibbling a fig. Then he went to his room. In his wall, there was a way down to the cage where he put you. He went down twice to look at you. Afterward he put the keys near his bed. I took them and asked Chirp to bring me to you a different way than through his room. All the People knew how to find you once you woke up. Smugly he added, But I am the only one of the People who knows about keys.

  “You are the wisest, cleverest creature I’ve ever met,” she whispered, cuddling him. “You saved my life and my wits. Did you see where he took Kitten? I dreamed he enchanted her.”

  Zek shook his head. He did not visit her, the marmoset explained.

  Daine leaned back against the wall. “He wouldn’t hurt her. I’m not at all sure he can. So he’s put her somewhere—perhaps in the menagerie with the other immortals. I dreamed that’s what he did, anyway. We’ll look and see.”

  Still cuddling Zek, she dozed off until Chirp nudged her awake. Kaddar and Tano were coming. When the prince saw her, he stopped, dark face turning ashen. “Daine? Tano didn’t say—”

  She glared up at him. “You know what your uncle did to me?”

  “We have to get her out of here,” Kaddar informed Tano. “Once he finds her gone, he’ll tear the palace apart.”

  “I’ll go happily, once I get Kitten back,” she said. “Tell me something, if you please. Do you know anything about a drug called dreamrose?”

  “It produces sleep,” he replied promptly. “And true dreams.”

  She nodded. “All right, then. I think—I’m fair certain—Numair’s still in Carthak. Once I find Kit, will you smuggle me to the university? I can’t leave this place without him. He—” The look on the prince’s face brought her up short. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Daine—”

  She rose. “What?”

  Kaddar put a clumsy hand on her shoulder. “Please, try to remain calm.”

  “Your uncle tricked me, drugged me, put me in a locked room with no air and stale food, and then he made my friends leave without me. He also kidnapped my dragon, and I want her. And he’s using this as an excuse to start a war with Tortall. I won’t be calm for weeks, so you’d best tell me!”

  “They caught him. Master Numair. He gave them the slip in Thak’s Gate, but they found his hiding place at the university. And my uncle wouldn’t risk his escape. Not a second time. He was executed, a day ago.”

  For a moment she listened but heard only an ominous thudding in her ears. Then she said flatly, “You’re lying.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Not about something like this.”

  “Then Ozorne lied to you.”

  “I saw it. He made me watch, along with everyone else at the university. Daine, I’m sorry. Numair Salmalín is dead, and we have to get you out of Carthak.”

  Coolness trickled into her mind until her skull was filled with it. Her world seemed extra sharp and extra real. Part of her, someplace deep inside, wailed; that seemed unreal, as if she watched a crying baby from a great distance.

  Kaddar was shaking her. “Daine! Can you hear me?”

  She gently pushed his hands away. “Stop that. I’m thinking.”

  His eyes and Tano’s held the same worried, frightened look. “You weren’t answering. You looked frozen—”

  She put a finger to her lips, and he shut up. A thought was coming in the distance. She waited, patiently, skin rippling in brief shivers, until it reached her: Ozorne had to pay.

  The gods had taken too long to say whatever it was they’d planned to say here. With all those omens and portents they had sent, the sole effect had been her kidnapping and her friend’s execution. Plainly she would have to take care of this herself. If any gods tried to stop her, they would regret it.

  “What time of the day is it?” Her voice sounded distant, but reasonable. Something about her, though, must not be right. She saw that Chirp backed away to press against Tano’s legs, fur on end. Both men began to sweat.

  “Mid-afternoon,” replied the Banjiku, eyes bright with concern.

  “Where is Emperor Ozorne, Your Highness?”

  “Across the river, reviewing the Army of the North. They march in two days to the staging point in Thak’s Gate.”

  She had no interest in armies at this moment. “Will he return today?”

  “Yes. He has to meet with some officials—”

  “When?”

  Kaddar wiped his forehead on his arm. “After sunset.”

  “Tano, could you pass word to all the slaves by dusk, if you had to?” The black man nodded. Daine looked at Kaddar. “Does anyone that you care about live in the palace?”

  He wet his lips with his tongue. “Yes. But—”

  “Tell the slaves and your friends to be ready by nightfall. When things break loose, they must leave the palace. I don’t care where they go, so long as they do.” She sat down again and let Zek climb into her lap.

  “You can’t just—”

  Something in her face made him stop back. “Please don’t say what I must and mustn’t do, Highness.” It was amazing, how cold she felt. “Hurry, now. Dark comes early here, I’ve found. Tano—the emperor’s birds.”

  The little man bowed deeply, hands crossed over his breast. “One of the tunnels opens insid
e the glass birdhouse, Great One.”

  “If I tell them to go with you and your folk and not be frightened, will you carry them to a safe place? They won’t try to escape you.”

  Tano nodded. “We will take them away, gladly.”

  Daine nodded. “Thank you. Before dark, please!”

  Tano bowed again, and drew the prince away. Chirp followed them into the tunnels.

  Dry-eyed, the girl stared at the ceiling. “You don’t have to stay, Zek. It may be scary.”

  I will stay, replied the marmoset. Scary with you is better than scary without you.

  Daine tickled his stomach gently, then closed her eyes. “I didn’t get to say good-bye or anything.” She swallowed hard. Her friend, her teacher—he had shown her the use of her wild magic, looked after her when her first trial with it backfired, taught her the science that enabled her to learn more about the People than she had ever dreamed of knowing.

  Gathering up her power, she spoke first to Ozorne’s birds. It was quick work to persuade them to go with the black men and women who had already begun to emerge from an opening in the aviary floor. Once all of them had gone back into the tunnels with the Banjiku, she cast her wild magic to the far side of the River Zekoi, and summoned every small creature that crawled, walked, or flew to the camp of the Army of the North. Let Ozorne see how far his soldiers could march with gnawed rope and leather, bad food, foul water, and useless weapons. Anyone who tried to use ballista or catapult would be in for an unpleasant surprise, as would the wagon drivers. Mule skinners and horse-masters wouldn’t go very far without their charges.

  She had done it before, calling on her friends to harass the enemy in a siege or to keep soldiers too busy to go to anyone’s aid. Never before had she done it on this scale, but it wasn’t that hard to summon thousands instead of hundreds or tens. It was almost a relief.