I went down the steps toward them. Atalin swung above me, silent and brooding, like a spider caught in its own web.
My feet hurt, but inside I was happy.
I had finally worked out the beginnings of a plan for what lay ahead.
24
WHILE I HAD the beginning of a plan, I certainly didn’t have the middle, or most important, the end. Nor did I get the time to develop my plan any further. After the duel, I returned to the guest house I had been allocated, had my feet treated by Uncle Hormidh, and then suffered a number of semiofficial visits from Princes who wanted the newest winner of the Imperial Star of Valour to join their Houses. All of them had to be offered drinks, and I forced myself to listen to their ‘compelling’ reasons why joining their particular House would be of enormous benefit to me.
Unsurprisingly, there was no ambassador from House Jerrazis. When the tenth Prince, a member of House Izhwall, left, I collapsed back in my rather thronelike armchair and ordered Haddad to admit no more. Night had fallen outside, and I wanted time to think through my plan before the announcement of the Imperial candidates was made.
But I did not get that time. I had barely sat back and taken the proffered goblet of wine from Haddad when I received a priority communication in mindspeech from the Imperial Mind.
:Hier Imperial Highness has chosen the thousand candidates who will contend for the throne. The Princes chosen are . . .:
I tried to tune out as the long list of names rolled through my head but gave a start when I heard my own name. Right up until that moment there had always been the slight possibility that Morojal had lied for her own purposes, or even that she was wrong. That slim hope was now denied to me.
I took a sip of the wine. It was chilled and delicious, something based on an old Earth variety that was both fruity and dry, and that left a slight tang in the mouth after you swallowed.
But after that swallow, I couldn’t move. I tried to turn my head without success. Even my eyes would not move in their sockets. Yet none of my warning systems had alerted me. They still said the wine was only wine.
Haddad moved into my field of vision and bowed his head.
Leaning forward, he stripped me of my weapons, carefully tucking them away in the pockets of his own robe. Then he put a pair of light slippers on my recently tended feet and stepped back.
:Haddad? You have poisoned me?:
‘I regret that this is so, Highness,’ confirmed Haddad.
:But you’re my Master of Assassins . . .:
‘I am foremost a Priest of the Emperor, in Hier Aspect of the Shadowed Blade,’ said Haddad. ‘This is part of becoming a candidate, Highness. It is not a poison but a nanoinhibitor tuned particularly to you. The effects are temporary. You will soon be mobile again but will be weakened for a short time, your augmentation and some internal systems turned off.’
:Weakened?:
‘Princes have been known to attempt unauthorised winnowing of other candidates before commencement,’ said Haddad. ‘This . . . pacification . . . ensures that all candidates embark upon the initial test.’
I tried to move my hand and was rewarded with a twitch of two fingers. I followed that up by clearing my throat, and found that I could move my tongue clumsily and talk, after a fashion.
‘I would have complied without this,’ I whispered. ‘I always thought I could trust you, Haddad. Always.’
Haddad sighed and looked down at me.
‘We are what we are made to be,’ he said. ‘I am utterly loyal to you, Highness, in all matters save the direct order of the Mind. As in this circumstance, my Prince, I could no more disobey than you could yourself. Try to stand up now.’
I stood up, very shakily. I was as weak as when I had emerged in my nonaugmented body and would have fallen, except Haddad caught my arm. He held me up and propelled me toward the front door. We passed through the reception hall, which had been populated with my priests and Haddad’s apprentices only a short time before. Now it was empty.
Outside, the moon was up, hanging huge and low on the near horizon. Not just any moon, but a pale disk that I knew from long-ago history lessons in my candidate temple. Bright but cold; the pattern of its craters and mountains signified that it was the moon of ancient Earth.
Haddad watched me gaping up at this unexpected satellite and foresaw my question.
‘It is the moon of Earth,’ he said quietly. ‘The fifty-fourth Emperor had it brought here. It is in an eccentric, guided orbit and is illuminated only on the night the candidates go forth, once every twenty years.’
I looked around me, across the gardens. Out of every guest house nearby, a stumbling, weakened Prince was being led and supported by his or her Master of Assassins.
‘You lied about Prince Emzhyl,’ I croaked. ‘You took her, as you are taking me.’
‘Yes, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘Again, upon the orders of the Mind.’
We did not speak after that. It took all my energy to lift and move my feet. Without Haddad I would have fallen and lain on the grass, twitching like a bug that has reached the end of its short season of life.
All of us shuffling Princes were being herded in the same direction, toward the moon. Its light fell like a silver highway across the gardens, drawing us along, over lawns, through courtyards, down converging lanes and paths.
We probably travelled no more than a thousand metres, but to me it felt like one of the longest journeys I had ever undertaken. I was weary in both body and mind, and bitter, because I had always trusted Haddad, and at least some part of me had built up the irrational feeling that he really was my friend, one of my family, and that he would take my part even against the Empire.
If I had examined this feeling, I would have known it was false. Haddad was as much a creature of the Empire as everybody else, as all we Princes were. He could not escape the strictures and conditioning of his calling any more than I could.
We came to the top of a low hill. Though I could barely turn my head, I saw that there were many Princes to either side of me. Some were in worse shape than I, their Masters of Assassins practically carrying them. Yet again, Haddad had proved to be a most superior assassin, dosing me exactly as required and no more.
All the Princes were being lined up in one long, extended rank along the ridge of the hill. I looked down and saw dark water below. A broad lake, whose far shore I could not see, as my eyes suffered the same weakness as my muscles.
The light of the moon fell only on the closer shore below us. It was a sandy beach that stretched to the left and right as far as the line of Princes was long, perhaps two thousand metres. Drawn up on the beach there was an answering row of one thousand slim, sharp-prowed boats, each not much wider or longer than a man.
‘The candidate boats,’ said Haddad quietly, close to my ear. His fellow Masters were telling their Princes the same thing, at the same time, making an odd noise, like the shuffling of many leaves caught by a slight and momentary breeze.
We advanced down the hill, the thousand Princes and the thousand assassins, each pair going to a particular boat that was straight ahead, so there was no need to cross paths or shuffle sideways. Everything was perfectly arranged.
:Welcome to the first stage of the testing, Princes > Masters of Assassins, place their Highnesses in the candidate boats:
Haddad had to lift my feet to get me into the boat and then help me down. As I lay back, and pseudopods rose up and lashed around my legs, chest, and arms, I realised that it was not exactly a boat, though it was dipping and floating on the water. It was some kind of Bitek organism, and it was holding me very tightly indeed.
‘Good luck, Highness,’ whispered Haddad. He laid his hand very lightly on my chest, then slowly withdrew it, his fingers curling as if he had reluctantly let go of something that he had once treasured. Then he stepped back and was gone.
A translucent membrane closed over the top of the pod, sealing me in, and the Imperial Mind spoke inside my
head.
Only it felt slightly different from the way it usually did, with a more distinctive mental voice that somehow came across as being very weary.
:The candidate boats are controlled by Psitek > After they are launched, you will need to guide your craft through the central channel of the waterfalls that lie ahead, and then through the subterranean river beyond. Those of you who succeed in doing so will reach the second stage of the testing. There will be no witnessing: if you die here, it is a permanent death:
That was the Emperor Hierself, I thought. Not the collective voice of the Imperial Mind. Taking a personal interest in whichever Prince would replace them and allow them to sink into the gestalt entity. From the weary, resigned feel of that communication, I thought the Emperor was looking forward to that outcome.
This only further confirmed that I really did not want to become the Emperor.
But my choices had narrowed. I had to compete or die.
The pod shuddered under me, a vibration coming from the sides as whatever propulsion system it used sprang into life. The boat began to rock more as it headed out into the open waters of the lake.
Though I was still physically weak and none of my Mektek systems or Bitek glands were operational, my Psitek senses did appear less affected. I reached out, seeking the echo of a Psitek system. But I caught nothing from the boat, though I did pick up several Princes nearby, catching angry mental swipes as they sent Psitek probes all around them.
I started to get seriously concerned. But as I mentally searched the boat again, I did feel a response, an echo that reminded me of Korker’s Bitek brain. I focused on it, exerting my mental strength, and eventually it answered. It was not self-aware, like Korker, or anywhere near as sophisticated, but after a few minutes of exploration and experiment I worked out how to stimulate different parts of its simple brain to regulate the speed and pitch of the flippers that were the boat’s propulsion and steering systems.
Not that this did me a lot of good, because I was held down by the pseudopods and couldn’t see anything except the sky above me. A sky almost totally dark, save for the faint sliver of a moon rapidly disappearing behind my boat. So how could I steer the boat to a middle channel of the waterfall ahead?
It occurred to me that I could just do nothing. After all, Morojal had said there were really only five possible candidates out of all the thousand who were now launched upon the lake. Surely they wouldn’t risk losing one of the five so early and, if Morojal was to be believed, their favourite candidate?
If Morojal was to be believed . . . that was not something I was prepared to stake my life on.
I needed to be able to see, or use some other senses to steer, as I had done when I had accessed the rescue beast’s sonar in the reservoir back in the Kharalcha Habitat.
Someone else’s senses. Best of all, someone else’s eyes.
:Haddad. Are you there?:
:Yes, Highness:
:Will you obey me?:
:In anything I am permitted to do by the Imperial Mind, Highness:
:I need to see through your eyes, so I may steer my boat:
:Yes, Highness. That is why we remain here, on the shore. Please proceed:
He didn’t explain to me how to proceed. But I instinctively knew. I shut my own eyes and followed the mental trail established by our communication microseconds before. I felt myself enter Haddad’s mind, or some contained portion of it, and then the darkness behind my eyelids was suddenly replaced by a clear vista: a view of the lake, all the way across, for Haddad’s vision was greatly enhanced by his Bitek eye. There was even a map overlay, and a grid, and a pointer indicating my own boat and the desired channel I must take.
The channel was almost straight ahead of me, at least partly confirming that Morojal had spoken the truth. I had been placed in a very favourable candidate boat. Several hundred of the others, far to my left and right, would have no chance of making the central channel, even if they did work out how to see and steer. As I looked through Haddad’s eyes, it was clear very few of them had figured out how to use their assassin’s eyes, or if they had managed that part, had not discovered how to steer.
Even in this contest, the Empire was trying to adjust things the way the Imperial Mind wanted.
But I had little time to think about my fellow Princes. There were a number of strong currents rushing my boat toward the waterfall, but not toward the correct channel. I had to urge my boat to swim hard, its flippers digging deep as it drove diagonally across the lake, sliding this way and that as various currents pushed it off course.
I found that in my weakened state even the mental effort of directing the boat and looking through Haddad’s eyes was exhausting. It took all my willpower to keep my Psitek focused on both activities, and for a moment I thought I would faint with the effort. But I hung on, and then all of a sudden I saw the pointer for my boat was in the right channel and that I was on the very edge of the waterfall, and then— Everything went black as I lost the connection to Haddad. I opened my eyes, but all I could see was darkness, and there was water roaring all around the boat as it suddenly flipped up on its end and the pseudopods released me. I was hurled against the transparent membrane, which was now as hard as if it was an armoured shell. The boat corkscrewed violently, and I felt water strike my face and legs.
:Hold your breath. This really is farewell, Khemri. Either way:
The mental voice was very faint. It was the last thing I ever heard from Haddad. I suppose in many ways he was like the father I’d never had, or perhaps some wise uncle, saddled with a foolish nephew. At the last, I caught some thought like this from him as well, a moment of sadness that we were both caught in our Imperial roles. The sadness was for himself, as well as for me.
I followed Haddad’s final advice at once, gulping several great lungfuls of air before I held it in, a moment before the water I could feel bursting into the boat completely filled it. As it reached my head, I scanned the pod’s brain again, searching for a nerve impulse that would free me from the clutches of its pseudopods. I had not found one initially, but now it was there, as plain as day. I mentally stabbed at it, and the entire boat fell apart around me, the pseudopods shrivelling back as if withered by acid.
I flailed about in deep, lightless water.
All around me, I felt the Psitek screams and rantings of Princes as they drowned. There and then I knew what happened to most of the thousand Imperial candidates.
With my Mektek navigational systems and sensors out, I had no idea which way was up. But rather than swimming in some random direction, I simply stilled my limbs and let myself float.
Even with the armoured bones and other odds and ends inside me, I knew I was buoyant, and should be even more so than usual with my lungs fully inflated.
That was the theory, anyway. After two minutes—calculated by slow counting, since my internal clocks were not responding—I began to become afraid. The fear came very close to panic, but I kept it in check, and gradually the fear subsided, to be replaced by something that was almost acceptance.
Perhaps drowning wasn’t so bad after all, compared to becoming the Emperor. If I did win this competition, I would be bound to something I had come to despise, essentially imprisoned within the Imperial Mind. Having ultimate power in the Empire would be no compensation for the limitations that would be imposed on . . . on what I supposed was my soul, an archaic word whose meaning I had never really understood before now.
But whatever philosophical thoughts my drowning mind was having at this stage, my body didn’t share them. My eyes caught a glimmer of light, above and to the right. Instantly I was thrashing toward it, arms and legs kicking wildly, using up every last shred of energy, but it seemed to recede before me, continuing to get farther and farther away until suddenly my head broke the surface. Coughing and spitting, I gasped for air; at the same time I looked around for whatever new and terrible threat was undoubtedly about to appear.
 
; 25
THE LIGHT I had seen was a strip of Bitek luminescence several metres long that was stuck on the rough stone ceiling high above me. In its soft light I saw that I had surfaced in a cavern that was either natural or had been made to look as if it was. It was basically round, about twenty metres in diameter, and at first it appeared as if the only way out of it was to go back down through the water, something I really didn’t want to do.
Then I noticed there was a small dark patch to my right, just above water level. I slowly swam toward it, or more accurately floated with intent in that general direction. I eventually got there and saw it was the mouth of a tunnel that sloped sharply upward.
The tunnel was about as wide as my shoulders, and smoothly bored, pretty much indicating that this was where I was meant to go.
Naturally, I distrusted it. But after looking around several more times, I couldn’t see any alternative. I also needed to get out of the water. It was very cold, and the nanoinhibitor Haddad had given me in the wine had not worn off. I had regained a basic human level of fitness but none of my higher functions. Most importantly, I couldn’t regulate my temperature at the moment, so I was feeling the effects of immersion. I needed to get dry and warm. Or find some means to reactivate my augmentation.
Very slowly, I hauled myself into the tunnel and began to worm my way up. It was dark at first, as soon as I’d blocked the light from the cave with my body, but after five metres or so, there were two little dots of Bitek luminescence, and another pair five meters after that.
I followed the glowing dots for a long time and, after a while, noticed that I was no longer cold, and I felt less tired than I had. My augmentation still hadn’t come back online, but I was used to that from my time in the Adjustment test and on Kharalcha. Heartened, I crawled onward, questing ahead with my Psitek senses, as well as keeping as sharp an eye as possible out for traps.
Eventually, the tunnel began to widen. I slowed down and advanced even more cautiously till I arrived at a door set in the stone. It was of old Mektek, complete with visible rivets, and had a purely mechanical wheel to operate it. I knelt close and checked it over, even listening with my ear against the steel, but I didn’t discover anything. My Psitek senses also didn’t pick up anything on the other side.