Deep Secret

  Dakros and Jeffros nodded, to my relief, equally eagerly. I looked from face to face, Magid-wise, and found they were sincere. “Fine,” I said thankfully. “Let’s get going.”

  They gave me one of the fat-barrelled handguns which had been adapted to fire a signal light and showed me how to fire it. I was to fire one shot if I was successful. If Knarros refused to deal with me, I was to fire two. In the unlikely event of real trouble, I was to fire three times and armed support would attempt to break through the protections and come to my assistance. Again I looked from face to face. They had real faith in me. I felt pressured.

  I rode to the base of the hill in their tall vehicle, leaving my own car sitting beside a vineyard with one door hanging open. I thought Stan would prefer that. And it was unlikely anyone would try to steal an offworld vehicle that didn’t even run on Empire fuel. Lady Alexandra sat beside me during the short, dusty journey, telling me her plans for the imperial children. “I’m glad some of them are girls,” she said. “I’m going to enjoy giving them pretty dresses and nice things. But I think the main thing I want to give all the children is more children their own ages. I want them to be surrounded with fun and life for a change – though it worries me that they may have been walled up on that hill so long that they’ll just find everything too big and terrifying outside. I shall have to go slowly and get them used to court life by gentle stages.”

  She seemed to me to have the right ideas.

  They dropped me off by the path and drove off along the road at the base of the hill to wait by the carriers for my signal. I stood on a dirt road in a golden evening contemplating the cart track that led up through the wood. The stuff on it was fierce. I set one foot on it and hastily backed off again. Seldom have I met such inimical magics. I couldn’t help admiring the craft of it. By its nature, and judging by the wheel tracks on the path itself, I could tell the working could be lifted or lowered at any time, even by someone who knew no magic. That takes skill. But unfortunately, it had to be lifted from within the walls uphill. I doubted if I could touch it from here. But it seemed to me, as I stood and thought the working through, that the embargoes and preventions were far fewer among the trees of the wood. When I moved about ten feet aside from the track, things seemed much quieter. I made sure I had the thickest shielding I could and went up through the trees.

  It was very steep going, but otherwise very pleasant at first – allowing for the fact that I was pushing aside a new prohibition with almost every step. The trees were evergreens, green-black ilexes and various kinds of pine, and the golden light struck through them in dusty fingers smelling of incense and rosemary. Restful. As I climbed, I realised that I was pretty weary anyway after the afternoon dealing with Rob. Emotionally exhausted. Having to go and argue with Knarros on top of it was a real nuisance. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go away and rest and be done with the Empire. As the hill got steeper and I had to duck my way under thicker and thicker branches, I grew more tired than ever. I was panting like a person sawing wood. The beam-gun dragged in my pocket and my shielding felt like plate armour. And, as the sun went lower, it grew confoundedly cold. Far from sweating with my efforts, I was actually beginning to shiver.

  The cold alerted me. A strong, permanent working has to get its energy from somewhere and this, unlike the magics of the path, was a permanent working, neatly designed to drain the energy of intruders by using their own metabolism against them. I stood still, and my knees nearly buckled. My teeth chattered. And I saw that I had not even been going uphill, but slantwise around. Stan would have laughed his head off. He had taught me all about this kind of thing. I felt my face heating with sheer embarrassment, as I realised that the path was nowhere near and the gate to the colony somewhere above and to the right.

  I said, “Sod this for a game of soldiers! Knarros, you sent for me!” and I simply drove a path to the gate through all this nonsense and followed that path angrily. Anger has its uses. The hill was not really very steep and there were far fewer trees than I had thought. I reached the rough stone wall and the unpainted gate in it within about a minute. The wall was about twelve feet high, the gate an elderly splintery double slab of wood. I hammered on it.

  “Open up! This is the Magid!”

  I heard shuffling on the other side. The voice that answered reminded me of Rob’s. It was husky, but younger than Rob’s, and cracked on the last word. “What do you want?”

  “I want to speak to Knarros of course! Urgently, on Empire business.”

  Another voice answered, “Prove you’re a Magid.”

  “Then you’d better stand clear of the gate,” I said. There was further shuffling. “Are you standing clear?” I called out.

  “No,” said at least three voices in chorus. The husky one went on, “Knarros said no one was to come in.”

  Then why the hell did he send Rob for me? I wondered. As it was evident from the sounds that at least three youngsters were bracing themselves against the gate from inside, I gave up the idea of forcing it open and went in over the top. It was nearly a disaster. I hate levitating (it’s one of my least secure skills) and there was some kind of magical protective dome over the place – this was certainly what had deflected Dakros’s beams – which I hit and nearly bounced off. I clawed hold just in time. Then I had to hang there and tear my way through, clawing with my fingernails and kicking with my feet, while the three youngsters inside gazed up at me hanging and struggling above them with their mouths open.

  I landed beyond them, rather clumsily, and turned to face them. One was a young centaur, not as comely as Rob, but with a family likeness in the dark and aquiline nose. The other two were human boys about twelve and eleven years old. Neither was much to look at, but then Timos IX was not much of a looker either. Both had their long hair in an untidy pigtail down their backs. They wore grey woollen smocks and large home-made-looking shoes.

  “How did you do that?” said the elder. He was the one with the husky voice.

  I gave him a slight bow. He was, after all, almost certainly the future Emperor. “Levitation. You asked me to prove I’m a Magid. Now will one of you please direct me to Knarros.”

  “Kris will get him,” piped the younger boy. “We have to stay here on guard.”

  “Nothing like shutting the stable door,” I said. “As you please.”

  The young centaur frowned at me as he trotted past. I did not feel like standing humbly by the gate waiting on the pleasure of Knarros – I was too irritated – so I followed him, but more slowly. The protection spell which I had torn through was draping around me and clinging to my shoes. It occurred to me that when I came to fire the signal gun, the stuff would probably deflect the flames back into my face, so I proceeded to get rid of it by kicking it loose and bundling it ahead of me with my arms as I went.

  The walled space was largely a stony yard, dome-shaped because it took in the top of the hill. In the middle, at the summit, there was some kind of dark bush and an altar. Of course, I thought, they worship the Emperor’s dreary bush-goddess here. Otherwise the place was very barren and domestic. A few small stone houses were built against the circling walls, little more than stone huts really. There was a well and a line of washing, which I heaved my growing bundle of protection magic over, and very little else. My opinion of the late Emperor fell, if possible, even lower.

  I had just passed the well when three girls came hastily out of one of the stone houses and stared at me. Apart from the fact that their hair was in two pigtails, they were dressed identically to the boys.

  “What are you doing?” asked the youngest one.

  “Taking down your protection. There’s no need for it now,” I said, and hoiked the bundle over their heads. It was fairly heavy by then, about the equivalent of a roll of carpet, only long and lissom and bendy. I thought, as I heaved it up beyond the three, that Lady Alexandra was going to have a sad time with these. The elder two might have been pretty enough in the right clothes, but they were what my
Yorkshire grandmother would have called gormless. The youngest, a fair little waif of about ten, gawped like a child half that age, and her nose was running. It could, I supposed, be the result of their evidently Spartan upbringing, but I doubted it. “You’ll be leaving here soon,” I explained.

  “Leaving? Knarros never said anything about leaving!” one of the elder ones exclaimed. And, as if my statement had rendered me undesirable, she hastily propelled the other two back into the stone hut again.

  I shrugged and went on, bundling the spell stuff uphill ahead of me, until I reached the altar-stone. It was just a small, plain stone, slightly stained with fruit and pips on top. The bush was the unpleasant thing. I disliked it acutely. It was greyish, barbed and spiny, and it stirred and crackled at my approach, giving out the feeling of a deity half-manifested – a small deity, but not a pleasant one. I tried not to look at it, thinking that it was an unfortunate thing that the link between the Emperor and Knarros should be something as barren and unpleasant as this.

  And Knarros was on his way now. I heard the shrill battering of hooves on stones, coming up the hill from my right. The sun was very low by then. When I looked towards the sounds, I could see blue sparks from the centaur’s iron shoes. I remember thinking that one of the tradesmen allowed up that cart track had to be a farrier. Rob and Kris were properly shod too, better shod than the imperial children.

  Then Knarros hove up the hill in front of me and I found myself gulping slightly. He was enormous. He towered over me like a mounted policeman over a riot. I heaved the spell-bundle over the altar and the bush and let it slide its own way down the yard on the other side. The bush-deity whipped about angrily as I turned to face Knarros. And here was another thing I had not realised about centaurs. The skin colour of their human torso is the same colour as the skin under the horse-coat. I had been misled by the fact that Rob and Kris were both light bays. Knarros in his horse part was dark iron grey. So were his face, his beard, his hair and his arms. He wore a grey sleeveless vest. The effect was like being confronted by a huge living granite statue. The expression on his face was in keeping with that. I have seldom faced a being who looked less friendly.

  “I’m told you’re the Magid,” he said. His voice was a hard, deep rumble.

  “That is correct,” I said. “And you’re Knarros?” The granite head bent in a curt nod. “Good,” I said. “Then you’ll know I’m here on Empire business. According to the files the Emperor left in Iforion, you have the imperial children here – those of the True Wives at least, I gather. As you must have heard, the Emperor, Timos IX, was assassinated about six weeks ago, so now I must ask you to hand over the new Emperor, together with proof of his birth, and any other children, by High Ladies or Lesser Consorts, with similar proofs, so that I can convey them to those people who are temporarily in charge of the Empire.”

  Knarros simply stood like a statue.

  “Oh come now,” I said. “The record the Emperor left states that you have details of all the heirs, including those placed on the world codenamed Babylon.”

  The granite statue reacted to the word “Babylon”. A flank flinched as if a horsefly had stung it. The hard voice rumbled, “I’m sorry. I can tell you nothing unless I am assured that you are indeed a Magid. I cannot be assured of Magid good faith on your word alone. I must request you prove your status.”

  This seemed fair enough. From the centaur’s point of view I could simply be a rogue mage with designs on his charges. I summoned a little-used skill and caused the golden Infinity sign to appear floating between us, softly glowing and rotating around its own figure-of-eight substance in the correct way. It was very beautiful, and very bright in the gathering twilight.

  Knarros looked at it unmoved, except that the golden light glittered in his great dark eyes. “A mere mage could do that,” he rumbled. “There’s more, if you are a Magid.”

  “You mean,” I said, “you want the whole ceremony?”

  “I do,” he grated.

  It seemed a bit excessive to me. I have never met the mage, mere or not, who could summon Infinity correctly, but then my experience is not as wide as many, and Knarros did have an important charge to relinquish. I sighed, beckoned Infinity to stand over my head, and went slowly and carefully through the ritual I had last performed when Stan sponsored me to the Upper Room. I had to concentrate. I had not done this for nearly three years. And I was distracted by the caustic rasping of the deified bush and, too, by my own growing feeling that this was not only excessive and slightly ridiculous, but wrong in some way. Something was wrong, didn’t fit, didn’t quite add up.

  Knarros simply stood and watched. The only sign of life he gave was a slight irritable shifting of the off rear foot, until I finished and bowed. Then he gave another of his curt nods. “I accept you as a Magid,” he rumbled. “What is it you want?”

  I ground my teeth and politely went through my request for the second time: the Imperial heirs, their names, dates of birth and proofs of identity, and the same for the children on the world codenamed Babylon.

  “I have all this,” he said. Then he quenched my relief by adding, “But you have been slightly misinformed. The true heir is a human female, the Emperor’s eldest daughter. She is not yet here.”

  “When will she arrive then?” I said.

  “At sunset,” said Knarros. He and I both looked north-westwards across the bush. The sky there was red-gold in streaks with the merest fiery slice of Thalangia’s sun showing. “The Empress will be here any moment now,” Knarros said. “If you wait here, I will go and fetch you the proofs you require.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and thought, And about time too!

  Knarros turned about, battering more sparks from the stones of the yard, and set off downhill towards a building at the back of the enclosure. He did not hurry himself. I had plenty of time to realise that my bundle of protection-spell was lying in his way and probably impenetrable. I should have left it. But I was sick of all this hanging about. I slipped across to it, got the heap of it on my shoulders, and gave it another upwards heave so that Knarros could pass underneath it. Then I gave it a sort of heaving throw that sent it away downwards and across the roof of the building he was making for. I had a notion that the bush-deity tried to prevent me doing all this, but I was irritated enough to ignore that. And as I heaved the bundle to my shoulders the first time, I could have sworn something hit the bundle hard – hard enough to make me stagger. I assumed it must have been a stone spurting from under Knarros’s hoof and I ignored this too. I also ignored Knarros’s command to wait where I was – all out of pure, cussed irritation, I may say. Instead, I went back over the top of the hill, past the altar and on down towards the gate, intending to ask the boys there who they had actually been told to wait for.

  I never got there. A few steps past the altar, I heard a dullish crack-boom from behind me. I turned and ran back that way, past the threshing bush and downhill to the building where Knarros had gone. My feet made a frantic noise on the stones of the yard. Stones clacked together and made blue sparks in the twilight. I could not think what the crack-boom had been, except that it had sounded horribly like blasting in a quarry, and I know I was quite surprised to see the building still standing there unharmed. My thought, I suppose – if I did think – was that I had removed the protection spell just as Dakros had run out of patience and opened fire.

  It was a bigger, slightly better building than the others, with a wide, high doorway to accommodate a centaur. I dashed inside it, into virtual darkness, and nearly fell over something stretched across the doorway. My fingers touched harsh warm hair as I tried to save myself. That sent me leaping backwards, to collide with the side of the doorway, where I stood just long enough to smell smoke and tepid butcher’s shop. At that, I raised light – another of my less secure skills – and when the candle flame finally rose high enough on my palm to show the stone space inside, I gagged at the sight of Knarros lying on the floor, with one leg that had broke
n as he fell doubled under him. He was no longer granite. He no longer had much of his face and was still pumping out steaming red blood from his neck. But centaurs do that, because of having two hearts. He was most definitely dead. One large grey hand clutched the revolver he had shot himself with. At the back of the room was the primitive-looking wall-safe where presumably the information I needed was still locked.

  As I stared at the safe, with the twirl of light trembling on my hand, its thick door slowly swung open. I could see it was empty. I looked down at what was left of Knarros again. He used a revolver! I thought stupidly. It seemed to take an age for me to put the facts together. Actually I think it was one of those times when things only seem slow.

  “Jesus!” I said. I dashed out through the doorway, hauling the flame-gun out of my pocket as I went – an Empire gun with a wide barrel to direct a beam and not a bullet – and fired as soon as I was outside, into the air, once, twice, three times. Then I went pelting round the base of the yard, following the circle of the wall, hoping and hoping I was not too late. Halfway round, I was joined by the young centaur Kris, who rushed out of another wide-doored building demanding to know what was wrong.

  He looked to be about fifteen. It was always possible he had shot Knarros, but I didn’t believe he could have done it with a weapon from Earth. “Did you hear anyone run past?” I gasped at him as I ran.

  He came alongside me at an easy trot. “Not this side,” he said. “But I heard people running on the other side of the yard.”

  “Oh hell!” I groaned. “Are you sure it wasn’t me?”

  “No, I heard you running down the back at the same time,” he said. “Please, what’s happened?”

  “Someone shot your uncle,” I panted. “Knarros was your uncle, wasn’t he?”

  “I’m sister’s son to him, yes,” he said. “But what… How…?”