"Never again," Spud gasped. "Never again." He began studying the machine.
"You still got to get down," Chaz reminded.
"Let him jump," Su-Cha said. "Maybe he can knit wings before he hits."
"Your sense of humor is juvenile," Chaz observed.
"I'm just a young thing. Barely two thousand."
"No booby traps," Spud announced.
"Do you recognize the workmanship?"
"No." Spud looked over the edge. He swayed. Rider grabbed his arm.
"Dang!" Su-Cha said. "Thought he'd try it."
Chaz kicked toward the imp's behind. Su-Cha was absent when his foot arrived. He cackled from a far corner of the platform, perched atop a workman's tool chest.
Mumbling, the workmen started leaving.
"Let's see if my father marked his killer. Su-Cha, do you smell anything?"
The imp sniffed around the killing machine. His face puckered into one huge frown. "It's there. But weak. Be hard to isolate." He got down on all fours, snuffled like a hound. He went right to the top of the ladder and over the side, head down.
"Don't take no demon to figure that," Chaz said. "No murderer was going to fly out of here."
Greystone suggested, "We could offer a reward for witnesses." The scholar seldom spoke. When he did, even Rider listened. "Even at midnight someone might have seen him."
"Hmm. No," Rider said. "Not yet. Likely to raise questions. Maybe if the news gets out. You and Spud might visit neighborhood watering holes. If anybody did see a climber he'll talk about it."
Spud complained, "Come on, Rider. Why can't we go with you? How come Chaz and Su-Cha get in on all the excitement?"
"Chaz will miss out too. He'll be looking for Soup and Preacher. We should have heard from them." Rider slowly turned as he spoke, flicked a glance toward the Citadel. "Ah. I thought so."
"What?" Chaz demanded.
"Someone is in the lab. Thought I saw movement a while ago."
"Let's go!" Chaz whooped, and went over the side. Spud and Greystone followed. Rider examined the death machine again, then seized one of the diving ropes.
He jumped.
Workmen yelled. Rider plunged toward the Plaza. The spring in rope and pole absorbed his momentum. He came to a halt six feet from the surface, let go, landed running. His associates were not yet thirty feet down from the tower platform.
He whipped into the Citadel, climbed stairs at a pace punishing even for his iron muscles, slammed into his father's laboratory.
The place was a shambles.
He placed one finger on the wall. It was warm. He nodded, made supple-fingered passes over the floor. Glimmering footprints appeared. Two men. One larger than the other. The larger tracks ran to the window and back. A lookout. The smaller feet went straight to the door, spacing indicating haste. The lookout had witnessed Rider's jump.
Rider was rereading his father's message when Chaz, Omar, Greystone, and Su-Cha arrived. "Catch them, Rider?" the imp piped.
"No. They were looking for a last message. And found one."
"Darn. That means trouble."
"For them." Rider indicated the wall.
Su-Cha chortled. "You changed it. Are they going to be mad."
"More than you know. I'll be there to greet them."
Chaz rubbed his hands together eagerly, drew the huge and entirely illegal sword he carried. He examined its edge.
"No," Rider said. "I'm going alone. You have your assignments."
"Rider!"
Rider ignored their protests, leaned out the window.
"What is it?" The whole laboratory shivered. Glass rattled. Dust danced.
"Military airship. I should have sensed it sooner. The web is more damaged than I thought. We'll have to wrap this up fast and get to repairing it."
Noise rose from the Plaza as the airship passed over. It settled toward the military moorings on the Martial Fields.
It was a gaudy bombard from the eastern fleet. The side effects of the sorcery that propelled it faded.
"Off on your errands now," Rider said.
"Suppose we catch the killer?" Su-Cha asked.
"Bring him here." Rider's voice was cold grey iron. "There are questions I want to ask."
"Right."
Chaz was out the door already, humming. He'd thought of an amusing trick to play on Soup and Preacher.
Su-Cha, Spud, and Greystone followed.
Rider busied himself in the laboratory, collecting items he concealed about himself. Then he set out on the trail of glowing footprints. He believed he knew where they were headed, but wanted to see what stops they made.
The footprints materialized a dozen steps ahead of him, faded that far behind. Before long the men making them separated. He elected to follow the smaller prints.
V
Chance led Su-Cha, Spud, and Greystone across Chaz's path. The northerner was holding up a wall with one shoulder while talking to an attractive young woman. His mind was not on business.
Su-Cha said, "Feast your glims on this, guys," and he scrunched his eyes tight shut.
His body changed. Not much, but enough to provide the appearance of a child about four. Then he charged Chaz, wrapped his arms around the barbarian's legs. "Daddy. Daddy. Mommy says you have to come right home."
Chaz's jaw dropped. The woman's brow wrinkled. The barbarian saw Spud and Greystone grinning. He roared, "Su-Cha! I'll flay you and use your damned spook hide ... "
"Daddy? Are you mad?"
Chaz kicked the imp into traffic, where he narrowly missed being trampled.
The young woman gave him bloody hell. He tried to explain. She did not believe a word he said. Imps!
Chaz was angry. He did not observe his surroundings in the alert way survival in the north demanded. He overlooked the gnarly men entirely, though they stood out even among the ten thousand outrageous foreigners haunting that Shasesserren street.
He worked his way from place to place, asking after Soup and Preacher. None of their acquaintances had seen them. He grew concerned. They should not have been so hard to find.
He made the acquaintance of the gnarly men as he cut through a delivery way between major streets. Those men seemed to prefer alleyways.
A rush of feet from behind.
Chaz's reactions were not impaired. Out came the illegal but seldom challenged sword. A gnarly man howled out his life as a cross stroke opened his belly. Another shrieked and clutched a savaged bicep. The mob halted, danced back out of reach.
Emerald cursed his men for idiots, cursed himself for being saddled with them, cursed the orders that brought him to Shasesserre. He redeployed. Two men with gladiatorial-style nets moved to the fore.
Chaz was not given to suicidal heroics. He retreated.
The net men knew their stuff. They feinted, pressed, feinted, tried to tangle Chaz's legs and blade. Their comrades threw brickbats. One especially savage throw glanced off Chaz's shin and succeeded in distracting him.
Net in high, brushed aside. But the net low tangled his right ankle. Down he went. The pack leaped forward. Chaz bellowed and roared, punched, kicked, and bit. He littered that alley with howling villains. But all the while Emerald danced in and out, whapping his hard northern head with the captured sap.
Chaz gave up to the darkness.
Soup wakened to a world throbbing and fogged. At one moment it seemed he was in a darkened coliseum, its walls so distant they were invisible, the lamps starry pinpricks miles away. The next moment it all rushed in. He was near crushed by gaudy eastern furnishings impossible to enumerate. His limited attention focused on a single detail, a slim, golden-skinned woman of incredible beauty, who paced before a wall hanging embroidered with eastern fantasies.
She was a little thing, and young, but no child. She moved with an animal litheness that set Soup's brain more aspin.
She said something softly.
A muffled male voice replied. Soup could not distinguish individual words. But it seemed a v
oice he should know.
The woman glanced at the prisoners. She had the most remarkable eyes Soup had ever seen. Big, green, they were eyes to swallow a man's soul. She was a trap to break a heart of stone!
She faced left. "There is no point complaining. Emerald is not here. And no change in plan can be made before the Master arrives."
The male voice became more strident but no more clear. Soup wished for a glimpse of the speaker.
The woman replied, "Your desires are of consequence only insofar as they complement those of the Master."
More male talk, angry. Threatening.
The woman smiled. She pointed. "Do you wish to join them? Or to do the Master's bidding?"
The complaints subsided.
All this while Soup's world shrank and swelled and rolled on its belly and back. Now darkness returned.
Later the veil parted again. A large, fluffy cat was nosing around his face. It would not go away.
A different male voice grumbled something in an eastern tongue. Many feet tramped. Men grunted. A body flopped down nearby. A gnarly man bent over it, forced something small and brown between slack lips.
Chaz!
Another of the group taken. What was going on?
The woman said, "Emerald, our friend doesn't like the way we're doing this. We're not moving fast enough to suit him."
The gnarly man spat. "I came here with twelve men, as you asked, friend. I have five dead and two with broken bones already. You were not honest with us. I think, when the Master arrives, you will answer for that."
The unknown man responded with fear in his muffled voice.
The woman said, "Your plan is sound. It will be pursued. We will isolate the Protector's son from his friends, then handle him. Then we will eliminate others who would resist us. That will not be difficult once the Master arrives."
The Master. The Master, Soup thought. Who is that?
Emerald said, "I suggest you obtain local helpers. I cannot keep losing men."
There was a stir. Someone came to where Soup, Preacher, and Chaz lay. He wore a heavy paper-mache mask pierced by two narrow eyeslits. The man in the mask laughed. "For this I will hire an army. I must have them all."
Soup again thought he sensed something familiar.
"Go recruit, then," Emerald said.
The man in the mask went away.
Emerald and the golden-skinned woman murmured to one another. Soup's universe remained unstable. And now his head hurt terribly. Preacher, he noted, showed signs of recovering too. Chaz, though, was out for the count.
Then he went down into the darkness again.
He wakened to: "The Master comes!" The golden-skinned woman's breath caught in her throat. A fetching effect, he thought ... The dizzies caught and spun him around.
He was not sure what he saw next was not part of a drug dream. A hideous little man no bigger than Su-Cha, with a large normal head, stood peering down at him. His coloring and dress were oriental. His hands were folded before him. His fingers were encased in golden shields meant to protect nails grown many inches long.
The dwarf radiated malevolence.
The Master.
The golden-skinned woman lay face down behind him, abasing herself. Of Emerald there was no sign.
Emerald was stalking the remainder of Rider's men.
His manpower depleted, he had opted for cunning. He posted his men, then sought out Spud, Greystone, and Su-Cha. Speaking Shasesserren brokenly, bowing, he blocked their path. "Is told you fella seek holy joefellaPleacher, so? Is bounty find same?"
"Maybe," Spud said. "Depends."
"You come see belong you fella friend Preacher, longside double." Emerald hurried away.
The three followed. "A remarkable physical specimen," Greystone said, scholarly curiosity piqued.
Spud grumbled, "There's an accent behind that pidgin that 1 know from somewhere. Can't get my hooks on it."
Grinning, prancing ahead, back to the gnarly man, Su-Cha said, "We've found our man. This is the guy Rider's old man marked."
Spud and Greystone halted. "You mean? ... "
"Yes indeed." Su-Cha's little round face went hard.
"You fella come?"
"By all means," Greystone replied. "By all means."
"Ambush of some kind," Spud decided.
"Somebody's going to ambush somebody," Su-Cha chirped.
But they were not prepared when it happened, as, passing a tavern, they were set upon by five gnarly men with nets and ropes. It was no fight at all. Greystone and Spud were netted, tied, and dragged into an alley almost before bystanders were aware something was happening.
Su-Cha was another matter. The gnarly men could not keep a net on a creature able to discorporate and reintegrate elsewhere. But they produced fetishes of holly and garlic and a rope of silver. They surrounded him with the rope. He could not escape their closing circle. The holly and garlic prevented him getting close enough to strike back.
Grinning, Emerald tossed a net into which silver thread had been plaited.
The last of Rider's associates was caught.
"Better this time," Emerald said. "Let's deliver them. Then we try the tough one."
"These guys were tough enough," one man protested.
"We'll have help after this. Shut up and come on. People are getting nosey."
VI
Rider followed the glowing footprints to a grand mansion on the Balajka Hill, Shasesserre's wealthiest section. He faced a decision. The tracks went in, but then came out again. Continue following them? Or investigate the house?
That was supposed to be empty.
Jehrke had known all Shasesserre's leading men, so his son knew them too. This mansion belonged to one Vlazos, currently posted to the western army for his year in five of public service.
Someone had usurped the place in his absence.
Rider decided he would come back later. He continued tracking the man who had had his father murdered.
He was two hundred yards away when a rushing coach nearly overran him. He rose angrily. Such drivers had no place in Shasesserre of the overcrowded streets. The coach turned in through the gate to the Vlazos mansion.
Rider intuited the arrival of an important conspirator. Perhaps one more important than the man he tracked. He turned back.
The Vlazos grounds were surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall. Rider made sure no one was in sight, swarmed up using cracks between stones for foot and hand holds. He peeped over the top, saw nothing remarkable, hoisted himself, dropped lightly to the manicured turf inside. He reached the side of the house only moments after the front door closed behind the newcomer.
The carriage stood untended. Rider sent his wizard-trained senses to explore. He could find no guard behind the door. The newcomer and his driver were moving deeper into the house, one toward the kitchens, the other toward where several lifesparks glimmered.
He recognized the sparks of Preacher, Chaz, Soup. The conclusion was unavoidable. His father's enemies had made them prisoners.
Rider went through the door as silently as death. He followed the man who had come in the coach. Already his driver was in the kitchens, drinking. Soon Rider heard a piping voice say something unintelligible.
A dozen steps more, along a shadowed hallway. He noted that oriental furnishings had replaced those Vlazos preferred. Ahead, a strong smell of rare eastern incense. A tapestry hung across a large doorway. He heard movement beyond it.
Rider peeped through the narrowest of gaps on one side. He saw his three men immediately, bound and unconscious. Nearer him, an attractive oriental woman abased herself upon the floor. She chattered in a melodic tongue.
Rider spoke half a hundred languages, but this one evaded him.
The newcomer spoke one curt syllable. Rider nearly jumped. The man was right in front of him. Was he invisible? His gaze dropped. A dwarf!
He hearkened back to tales his father had told, in his uncertain, fragmentary fashion. There were many old en
emies. One was an especially nasty dwarf. What was that name? Yes. Kralj Odehnal.
Kralj Odehnal, renowned sorcerer and dreaded torturer. One of the villains long stifled by the Protector. But Odehnal was a loner.
The dwarf and young woman chattered at one another. The fate of Rider's men was being determined. He prepared to surprise their captors.
But, it seemed, they were to be spared a while. He supposed as potential leverage. He decided to await developments. There was more afoot than a murder plot.
Time passed. Then men trooped in through another entrance. They carried Spud, Greystone, and Su-Cha.
Su-Cha! liven the imp.
His father's enemies were wasting no time bringing the shadow to Shasesserre.
It was time to move. To break the conspiracy's back before it became aware it had been found out.
Rider took an ebony figurine from a hidden pocket, held it against his forehead, over the point called the third eye. After a moment of concentration, he spat on it.
Beyond the tapestry the dwarf and gnarly men gabbled at one another in the unfamiliar language. Rider ripped the hanging aside, tossed the figurine, shouted, "Pyznar, you live!"
A shadow exploded into a dark, tusked demon. Its fangy mouth opened in a silent roar. Men squealed and shrieked. The sudden monster jumped on one of Emerald's gang. The dwarf cursed. The woman fled instantly, without thought or hesitation.
The shadow turned on a second victim as Rider stepped past the tapestry, his hands afire with fresh sorcery. Odehnal looked at him, snarled, "You!"
"Me. And the end of your game, Kralj." The shadow turned to a third gnarly man. Rider slapped his hands together, thrust them toward the dwarf. The combined fires flared violently, blindingly.
Odehnal shrieked, terrified, knowing he could muster no spell in time to save himself.
A gnarly man staggered into the space between Rider and Odehnal, shoved there by Emerald. The chief of the gnarly men snagged the dwarf and ran.
Rider's spell hit Emerald's sacrifice. Golden fires gnawed the man. He screamed. Then went silent when the shadow turned upon him.
Finished there, and with all Emerald's crew, the shadow faced Rider's men. It took Rider a full minute to restore the demon to miniature form. By then he had abandoned hope of catching Odehnal. His task, now, was to get his men out before the dwarf struck back.