“Stop pushing and just build a wall,” I gasped to Will.
We did that. That was Will’s special strength. But there were so many of them over there, and so strong, that it was precious hard work. We both sweated with it. But the cold waves rolled back a little.
Then, to our extreme irritation, Kornelius Punt leapt into the aisle and excitedly beckoned to the folk in robes. Ted Mallory stared from him to them and frowned as he talked. Kornelius then swung round, like a conductor, and beckoned to Will and me.
“I’ll wring that fellow’s neck!” Will snarled. “This isn’t a game!”
Kornelius thought it was, though. He saw everything as a game. I gave up the momentary idea I had had that Kornelius was acting as White’s lieutenant and probed among the grey cloaks to see who it really was. It had to be someone there.
By this time, Maree and Nick were aware that something was badly wrong. “Can we do something to help?” Maree murmured, still staring attentively at her uncle.
“Just hold my hand and grab Nick’s and both of you think strength,” I panted.
Her firm small hand instantly folded itself round mine. I heard her whisper, “Come on, Nick!” and I felt the result with gratitude, as an access of energy and, in Maree’s case, pleasure at being able to do something. Nick’s help was electric with excitement. He knew he was in a genuine magic battle and, in his quieter way, he was almost as high on it as Kornelius was.
Kornelius saw we had co-opted help. He beckoned the other side of the aisle again. Gram White was laughing. He thought this was really funny. His lieutenant was not so amused. With the new help from Maree and Nick, we were strong enough, Will and I, to build one of the stone-hard domes of protection Will is so good at. The lieutenant found himself forced to stand up and yelp some kind of command at the massed men in armour. They began to sway in their seats, clank, rattle, clank, and to hum a note deep in their throats.
Damn! I thought. That was a power song.
Ted Mallory stopped speaking and coughed into his microphone. “Do you mind?”
The deep note faded to a whisper, but it did not stop. Nor did the shuffling, rattling clink of armoured bodies swaying. Mallory shrugged. “Suppose the constellation of Orion became animated…” he continued, looking irritated.
From then on, things got really vicious. While Ted Mallory elaborated his fantasty about Orion – and Will and I both wished he wouldn’t: it verged on a deep secret of the Magids and distracted us – the lieutenant flung his worst at us. Power built so from the hum and rattle that all I could do was hold my share of the protective dome and make jabs at the grey-robed figure of the lieutenant, trying to find out who he was and where his weakness lay. His minions, being mostly amateurs, found the increased power difficult and lost their hold on it somewhat. Physical manifestations began. First it was filthy smells, and then lurid green smokes. When half-seen things like Chinese dragons flared and floated overhead, the baby behind me burst out crying and had to be carried out of the hall. Quite a lot of people left around then, and I didn’t blame them. Shortly, blue sparks began to sputter across the metal of all that armour. I saw horned figures leaping out of their seats in order to beat at themselves. This disrupted the power-build just enough so that my latest jab at the lieutenant caused his grey hood to fall back. It was Thurless.
I suppose I should have expected that, I thought ruefully.
The manifestations absolutely delighted Kornelius Punt. He began leaping about in the aisle, cheering both sides on. He annoyed Ted Mallory thoroughly. Mallory could ignore the smells and the shapes, it seemed, but he could not ignore a leaping human figure. “Oh, will you sit down, man!” he snapped.
Punt, not very chastened, went back to his seat and sat there jigging.
By this time, I knew that the only thing to do was to leave. Thurless had power that made him a potential Magid, and he had evidently been trained by White. Fisk was another. We could have handled them, but not with the back-up of several scores of others, and not if Fisk was simply going to drink up any stasis we tried to impose. I whispered to the others. Nick and Will agreed fervently, but Maree said, “Oh, poor Uncle Ted! I promised I’d hear every word!”
There was no way I could go away and leave her there alone with Janine and White. I shrugged helplessly. We could probably hold out.
“Oh, don’t be a fool, Rupe!” Will said. “Pick her up and carry her out. Or I will!” And he got up, pounced on Maree and swung her up out of her seat. She gave a surprised squeal.
Ted Mallory’s irritable face turned to Will, then shot round the other way as Janine sprang upright in the front row further along. Janine had no intention of letting Maree be removed. She flung her head back and gave a long, howling cry:
“Aglaia-Ualaia!”
I recognised the name of her unpleasant bush-goddess. So evidently did Thurless. He swung round, nodded at Janine and swung round again to wave at his helpers. They all gave out the same cry. “Aglaia-Ualaia!” Like a pack of dogs. There was a strong rush of ozone smell, meaning that the level of power had been raised yet again.
“Oh, really, Janine!” Ted Mallory said reproachfully across the noise.
“Be quiet, Ted!” Janine said to him. “Can’t you see this is far more important than your stupid talk?”
She came walking towards us along the space beside the platform. She came accompanied by a growing, thrusting, rapidly spreading thicket of dry grey thorny brushwood. We were by then also in the space, trying to retreat, but the thicket sprang up behind us, and through the chairs we had just left, and there was nothing Will and I could do but stand where we were and do our best to double the strength of our protective dome. The cries of White’s followers had brought the growth beyond the brink of reality. The stuff rustled and crackled as it grew, spreading out into the aisle – where I had a glimpse of Tina Gianetti, backing away in panic, dragging her disbelieving man-friend by the collar of his suit – and then growing in a rush through the speaker’s table as Janine passed along it. Maxim, who was reaching for the microphone in an effort to restore order, found the dry twigs rooting on his hand and then actually thrusting through his arm. He snatched his hand back and batted at it, frantically, his mouth open and his head up in despair and pain. Ted Mallory got up and backed away. His face was greenish-white.
The despair and pain were what the goddess brought. Janine had the same look as Maxim. She was almost entirely bush herself as she reached our protected space.
Maree said, “Witchy Dance, Nick, quick!” and wriggled out of Will’s hold on her. “You two do it as well, quickly!” She snapped her fingers, sprang into a pose and began the absurd dance that had so maddened me twice before. Nick, although he was as green-white as Ted Mallory and I could see him shaking, instantly joined in. And it worked. As they did the first idiotic flick, flick, flick of the fingers, the brushwood stopped advancing. We were in a tiny circular clearing, just big enough for the four of us, with dry grey thorns pressed against the invisible wall. Will and I made haste to join in. “Luck, luck, luck!” we all chanted. Flick, flick, flick. Silly as it was, it was fun too.
The second time we did it, however, I had a sideways view among the grey thorns, of the armoured men getting out of their seats and drawing their swords. Foremost among them was Gabrelisovic, snarling and dressed in armour at least a size too small. The rest were following his lead. They were doing it in a puzzled and reluctant way, but they were doing it, unsheathing weapons and beginning to advance on us. Thurless had thrown them at us as a help to Janine. I remember exchanging a hopeless look with Will. The aim of all this was to eliminate both me and Maree. With us gone, Dakros would have no case against either Janine or White and he would probably accept Janine as Empress out of sheer need.
We danced on, ridiculously and despairingly. There was no way Will and I alone could hold off the dry goddess and the folk in cowls and sixty or so men with swords as well. So far, all that the warriors were doing was walking forwa
rd, waving their swords. But each time our flick, flick, flick brought me round so that I could see them, the armed men were nearer and waving weapons with greater conviction – big, heavy, unpleasantly useful swords, they were. Foremost among these warriors was Gabrelisovic, towering in his borrowed armour. Each time I had a sight of him, he was swinging his sword more fiercely and evidently nearer to a pure battle-rage. The look on his face brought me out in chilly, useless sweat. Each time I swung round to the part of the thorny hedge that was Janine, she was more of a goddess. I could see the vast lineaments of a sardonic old woman building around and above the shape of Janine inside those thorns. She was simply leaning against our protective wall, waiting to become manifest enough to send her spiky growths through it and stop us as we danced.
And she was getting through. Dry grey spines were popping their way in towards us when the whole thicket went up in a crackling roll of flame. For an instant, fire washed over the dome of our defences, blinding and scorching us all. We stopped dancing, coughing.
By the time I could see and hear again, nothing was left of the dry growth but a broad black swathe, which stretched over the white cloth of the speaker’s table, down the aisle and along the first row of chairs. Janine’s body was lying in the exact middle of the blackness. Her hair was gone and her face was flayed to purplish meat.
Funny! I thought. She has the look of someone killed by an Empire beam-gun.
Rupert Venables concluded
The room was full of soldiers in grey and blue. Some were efficiently herding men in armour or folks in robes among the disordered chairs to stand in little huddles, each guarded by two soldiers. Others were on guard at all the doors. I wondered how many corners the troops at the far doors had had to turn in order to get there. I could feel the node whirling wildly about us. The first thing I did was to slow it down. I was too weak to do more. Then I looked round at Dakros. He was just beside us, slowly holstering the handgun that had undoubtedly saved our bacon.
“Oh God!” I said idiotically. “You have your dinner in the middle of the day!”
He shot me a look as sarcastic as that of the thorn goddess. “Of course. When else would one have it? Where is Gramos Albek?”
I pointed. “Against that far wall there. Or he was.” There was no sign of White there now.
Dakros unhitched his communicator and spoke into it briefly, keeping the sarcastic look and one raised eyebrow on me while he did so. Across the hall, a captain waved acknowledgement and a posse of soldiers moved in among the chairs there, guns at the ready. Dakros turned to face me. “Well, Magid, I promised to take action and I have. When I didn’t hear from you, I brought a troop carrier up Naywards as soon as Jeffros could get a gate open. And don’t tell me this isn’t Intended. I don’t want to hear.”
“I’m very glad you came,” I said humbly.
“Yes, it does rather look as if you might be,” he agreed. His eyes flicked over Will, registering him as a Magid, and then on to Nick and Maree. He looked at Nick with considerable satisfaction. I could see him thinking that Nick made a fine, tall, handsome heir. “I believe,” he said, “that I address the Imperial Highnesses Nichothodes and Sempronia.”
Nick nodded and then looked down again at Janine’s body. You would have said there was no expression at all in his face, except that the corners of his eyes had pulled into wrinkles, like an old man’s. Maree’s face had gone orange-red with embarrassment. “Please,” she said. “At least call me Marina.”
“My pleasure, Highness,” answered Dakros. “I’m very glad to see you restored to health. We’ve a troop carrier waiting to escort you both back to your rightful home. Prince Nichothodes, you are aware, are you, that you will shortly be crowned Emperor?”
“All right. If that’s what you want,” Nick said.
Oh well, I thought. I suppose this is what had to happen. Nick, for a moment, almost had me fooled. Then I remembered the smoothness with which he had three times ducked out and evaded Janine, and I realised that he intended to do it again. From the Empire this time. It was his placid, agreeable manner that gave it away. Goodness knew what he meant to do. Probably he did not know himself how he would manage it yet. But, somehow, I knew that when it came to the coronation of the new Emperor, Nick was going to be missing. The way Maree came and gripped my arm warningly only confirmed it. Maree knew too.
I risked a major row with Maree. I shook her hand off my arm. “You just can’t do that!” I said to Nick.
“I realise you don’t think he’s Intended to be our Emperor,” Dakros said, misunderstanding me, “but he’s the only male heir I’ve got, Magid, and I’m damn well going to get him crowned!”
“I don’t think my brother meant that,” Will said. “Did he, Nick?”
“Didn’t he?” Nick said guilelessly.
“It takes one to catch one,” Will said. “When Rupert was your age, we used to call him Houdini.”
“I don’t follow—” Dakros was beginning, rather irritably, when two things interrupted him, almost simultaneously. From across the hall came the snarl and flare of a beam-gun – aimed, I think, in the air as a threat – and some shouting. Soldiers were dragging a struggling robed figure out from under the chairs there. Dakros had scarcely time for an “Ah!” of satisfaction before he found himself confronted with Ted Mallory.
“You!” said Mallory. He was still pale, but firm and angry. “Yes, you, sir! What do you mean by shooting my wife?”
“It was necessary,” Dakros said.
“That’s a bare-faced admission of murder, if ever I heard one!” Mallory said.
“The woman was a murderess,” Dakros explained, “and a sorceress.”
“I bear witness to that,” I said.
Ted Mallory stared at us both, blankly. I was wondering what else one could say, when Maree seized her uncle by his arm. “You do know!” she said. “Come on, Uncle Ted. You didn’t even like her! Admit what you saw her do. Admit it, just for once in your life, Uncle Ted! Come on.”
Mallory looked down at her. “Admit to…” he said. “Oh all right. I do admit I thought I saw Janine as a most unpleasant – she was part of a most unpleasant sort of bush, I think.”
“Bravo!” said Maree. “Well done, Uncle Ted. Nick, you’re going to have to look after him rather after this.”
“I can’t if I’ve got to be this emperor, can I?” Nick said hopelessly.
“Take him with you, I meant,” said Maree.
“He’d go mad,” Nick said.
I was inclined to agree with Nick, and I was again wondering what I could say, when the soldiers arrived with their struggling prisoner. His beard was jutting. His robe was half off and being used to wrap his arms in by his captors, and he was yapping, “I tell you I am not Gram White! You have no business laying hands on me! Let me go this instant! I am an eminent writer!” I must say I was glad to see Mervin Thurless having a bad time, even though it was evident that Gram White had done a quick substitution as a prelude to a quick bunk.
Will and I exchanged looks. With those troops guarding the doors, White had to be in the hall still. He must have done the classic thing and hidden himself among the other people dressed just like him. We set off at a run towards the nearest grey huddle. Thurless screamed after us, “Stop those two! Stop them, I tell you! They are trying to rule the world!”
There were disarranged chairs and frightened people all over the place. Will and I had only made it as far as the central aisle when a trumpet pealed out from behind us. It was a strong fanfare, incredibly loud, and joyous, and ceremonial. It meant something. It heralded things. We spun round. Everyone did, people of Earth and troops of Koryfos alike. Every one of us stared.
The trumpeter was Rob.
He was alive after all – or more than alive: triumphantly and vibrantly alive. He had that same glow to his eyes and his coat that I had seen in my quacks when they returned, and that poise to his body, full of life and health. More than that, he gave you that sense that
he was now filling his true outlines, the same way as Maree and even Nick now did. Rob’s outlines were unequivocally the outlines of a prince. His mass of black hair was formally tied back. He had on a royal-blue uniform coat, braided with gold, evidently borrowed from someone in the élite troops, and it sat on him like a royal robe. He looked magnificent. As far as I could see, there was no sign of the wound in his side now.
He finished blowing the fanfare and brought the trumpet smartly down to rest against his right flank. “Silence!” he called out. “Silence for the Emperor Koryfos the Great!”
One forgets what lungs centaurs have. Rob’s ringing shout caused every movement and murmur to stop – except for the irrepressible Kornelius Punt, who was hugging himself and muttering, “A centaur now! A centaur! Now I have really seen it all!”
More soldiers entered the room behind Rob. They wore the uniforms I had always associated with an Empire honour guard, the royal blue and gold of Rob’s jacket, and bore themselves very smartly and formally. I heard one of the troops holding Thurless whisper, “They’re from the Twenty-Ninth! I thought we’d left them holding down Iforion!” They were followed by four splendidly dressed people. Zinka in her green velvet was one. Next to her was Lady Alexandra in full court dress, train, fan, coronet and all, and beside her was Jeffros as a Mage of the Empire in full panoply, and the flared cloak with Infinity shining on it in gold. The fourth was a Magid in ceremonial robes: white damask, fluttering purple bands, everything. Infinity shone on his breast too. Will and I both exclaimed as we recognised our brother Simon.
Following them, the Emperor came in.
There was no question he was Koryfos the Great. He was exactly like every statue I had ever seen, in the palace or around Iforion. There was also no question that he was my neighbour Andrew as well. His hair was maybe yellower and his face a touch browner, but I was nevertheless astonished that I had never seen the likeness before. The distrait and unassuming bearing of Andrew must have misled me. There was no question now that he was indeed Emperor. He came in wearing, like Rob, borrowed uniform and he even had his customary vague and modest look. And you realised you had never seen majesty before. People on Earth, particularly, are not used to real kings any more. But this was such a real king that your throat caught with awe.