The Old Man muttered, “There is, after all, someone older and more cunning than I am.” There was something in his tone that made Varthlokkur glance his way suspiciously.
The elderly gentleman spoke to his Horn. A flash blinded everyone watching. When sight returned, two tall, steely suits of baroque armor flanked the Star Rider.
“His living statues,” Varthlokkur said softly.
There was a place of mystery east of the Mountains of M’Hand, near the Seydar Sea, called The Place of A Thousand Iron Statues. It was believed to have been created by the Star Rider as a place of refuge, a place where his secrets would remain inviolate. No sorcerer yet had been able to fathom the magic animating the living statues guarding The Place’s secret heart.
“The bodies,” said the Star Rider. “Lay them out here.” He indicated the floor immediately before him. Working swiftly, the dark things moved the corpses. Then they moved back against a wall, becoming as motionless as dead metal.
“What’s he doing?” Nepanthe asked. The Old Man and Mocker moved closer to her and Varthlokkur. They eyed one another warily.
“I think he’s going to try to recall us,” the Old Man replied. Hope had exploded into his voice. He eyed them uncertainly. “But why?”
Yo Hsi and Nu Li Hsi reached the same conclusion. “Forget the dead!” they demanded. “Take care of the living.”
“Free us,” Nu Li Hsi concluded.
The Star Rider murmured to his Horn, setting spells on each of the corpses before paying the slightest heed to the brothers. Finally, squinting, he faced them. “You know who I am? What I am? What you are to me? And you still want my help?” To his Horn, “They’re greed and wickedness.”
Greed and wickedness. Modern legend said that for twice the age of the Old Man this strange being had walked the earth, appearing randomly. No one knew the why of his name, nor his purpose, but it was certain that each of his appearances omened a startling shift in the course of history. Another of his names was Old Meddler.
Who was he? Where had he sprung from? And why did he tamper?
The theory currently favored by the scholars of Hellin Daimiel was that he was a tool of Right, or Justice. The known historical indicators pointed that way.
He chose that role now, teasing the two dread easterners, whose crimes had been old when Ilkazar was young, into asking for justice. He taunted, questioned, played their fears, maneuvered them into making the plea.
“Justice?” he cackled gleefully. “Then justice I’ll give you!”
His hand twitched. The suits of armor stepped forward. He tapped one, pointed. It strode into the trap, seized a startled Yo Hsi. In a workmanlike manner, despite the hideous defenses and sorceries at the Demon Prince’s command, the living statue slowly strangled its victim. An unstirring Yo Hsi appeared on the level of reality in which Mocker, Nepanthe, Varthlokkur, and the Old Man already existed. He soon recovered from his death-shock and tried his prison again. Again he had no success.
Meanwhile, the metal thing turned on Nu Li Hsi. The Dragon Prince fled round the trap like a rat caught in a box with a terrier.
No escape did he find. Nor did his command of the Power avail him. The metal monster shrugged off his attacks, caught him, strangled him, contemptuously tossed him aside.
Nepanthe watched unhappily, but wasn’t greatly distressed. All emotion paled in this shadowland palatinate to final death.
Flash.
The iron men were no more.
“It left the cage!” said Varthlokkur. “Nothing can do that.”
“No? Something can,” the Old Man countered. “Things without life. Things immune to sorcery.” He eyed the Star Rider, wearing an expression suggesting that he and the interloper shared secrets.
The Star Rider looked back. “I’ll have to hurry. There’s not much time.” He turned to his Horn, murmured.
Mysterious devices appeared. These he quickly attached to the corpses over the vital organs. In a rush, then, he summoned an object resembling a massive, ornate coffin.
“I see what he’s up to,” the Old Man said excitedly. “Nobody’s done it in ages. Full resurrection. A lost art. Only he and I, today, could manage, and I never had the tools. It’s the box that’s important. Everything else is gimcrackery meant to preserve the vitals.” His excitement collapsed into gloom. “But he won’t have time to revive all of us. Even he can’t do much to slow brain deterioration.”
“Quiet!” Mocker rumbled.
Nepanthe whirled. “Don’t you talk…” Her rebuke died. The Old Man wasn’t his target. He glared at the shades of the easterners. They had begun carping at one another again.
Her gaze traveled on, to her corpse, and she became aware of its nudity. “Cover me, please.”
Varthlokkur, chuckling, said, “He can’t hear you. Not that it would make any difference.” He indicated her ghost-being, and those of the others. Each was mother-naked.
“But he looked at me. Or I could do it myself.” She felt foolish, worrying about modesty now.
“A guess, facing our way. He knows we’re here, but not where we are. Nor can you move material things. Best get used to being naked.”
“Fitting,” Mocker grumbled. “Shame of whore-wife made evident to all eyes.”
“Be careful,” Varthlokkur said angrily.
“Time,” the Old Man interjected. “He’s working too slow. He can’t possibly save us all.” A touch of hysteric hope rode his voice as he added, “He’ll get me, though. He owes me. I saved
his
life once.”
“Smug millenarian!” Mocker snapped. His situation had begun to disturb him at last.
His testiness further upset Nepanthe. “It’s silly for us to fight now. So stop.”
“Silence, shame of imbecilic believer in anythings!” His self-righteousness was thick enough to cut.
Nepanthe’s spirit, the fire her brothers had wanted quenched, flared. She advanced on Mocker like a stalking medusa. He retreated, retreated till, suddenly, he found himself cornered.
Forcing his attention, with a white-hot intensity, she told him everything that had occurred during their separation. “Listen!” she snarled, whenever he tried to interrupt, and, “Look at me!” when his gaze wandered. She finished with, “And that’s the absolute truth.”
He remained dubious, but found himself inclined to withdraw judgment. “Time will demonstrate verity of same. Or no.” Then, startling her with a sudden change of tack, “Is sorcerer truly father of self?”
“He seems convinced.”
“Truth told, wife of self is with child? Child of self?”
“Yes. Your baby.” She turned to watch the Star Rider, as much to mask her emotions as to watch him struggle to hoist a corpse into his life-giving coffin.
She suffered a surge of panic. What about the baby?
She had to live. So the child could be saved. She rushed round the cage so she could see who had been chosen.
Varthlokkur.
For a moment she hated him with a depth that astounded the rational part of her. She should go first. For the child’s sake.
Her own mind mocked her. She wasn’t worried about the baby. She just didn’t want to die.
Varthlokkur’s body flopped into the coffin. The Star Rider slammed its lid, growled at his Horn. As always, he did so in a language nobody understood. The Horn whistled. The coffin began humming.
Nepanthe ran at the Star Rider, shrieked, “Me first, you idiot! Me!” She pounded at him with the heels of her fists. He waved a hand before his face as if to brush away spiderwebs.
Mocker laughed. “More cosmic justice. Wicked woman forgotten. Likewise, self-important old geezer. Am much pleased. Am ecstatical, Star Rider.”
“Shut up!” Nepanthe screamed. “Somebody make him shut up. Our son…”
“But is hilarious, Dear Heart, Diamond Eyes. On Candareen, after big wedding, new wife promised to follow fog-headed husband to gates of Hell. Might do same now, maybes
o.”
Even before he finished he was sorry that vindictiveness had mastered his tongue again. He realized, intellectually, that his fear was taking creeping control of his emotions, his responses.
He couldn’t push it back.
Varthlokkur wandered dazedly. His body was calling him back. Struggling to keep control, he paused by Nepanthe long enough to whisper, “Remember your promises once we’ve been returned to life.”
Nepanthe nodded. How much pain would loving two men bring? Boundless, she feared.
It had seemed so elementary before Mocker’s arrival.
Varthlokkur rambled toward the coffin, and there mumbled a childhood prayer.
The Star Rider was a slow old man no longer. He knelt among the corpses, swiftly manipulating the devices meant to preserve.
Mocker, yielding to his fear completely, harassed Varthlokkur mercilessly. “Old Devil, Death of Ilkazar, show decency for once. Do right instead of evil…”
The Old Man, too, succumbed to emotion, though he directed his bitterness at the Star Rider. “Ingrate,” he said softly. “Have you forgotten Nawami? Who kept you from the tortures of the Odite?”
This Shadowland, Nepanthe reflected, though cooling the gentler emotions, certainly nurtured selfishness. Being dead, with time to anticipate a deeper death ahead, unleashed the black hounds of the soul.
A sudden thought startled Nepanthe. Maybe this was a trial period and one’s behavior during the waiting determined a final reward.
She was redeemed from terrifying speculations by a sudden stillness.
Varthlokkur had vanished.
The Star Rider opened the coffin.
The wizard was breathing shallowly. A rosiness had returned to his skin, which twitched and jerked. No blood leaked from his wound.
The Star Rider spoke, using a spell of healing which the Old Man recognized. Then he packed the area of damage with a malodorous unguent and applied bandages.
Nepanthe warily studied her companions-in-shadow from beside the coffin. Identical thoughts haunted their minds.
Who would be next?
The way the Old Man talked, one of them wouldn’t make it. Maybe two. The next selected could well be the last to return with a whole mind.
Briefly, Nepanthe hated both men for infringing on her chances. Then she concluded that she would have to be chosen next. Even the Star Rider couldn’t be so unchivalrous as to ignore a woman’s plight. Could he?
“I saved his life, you know,” the Old Man said again. “We were partners. During the Nawami Crusade. The Director slipped up. Nahaman, the Odite, became suspicious…” He shut up, realizing at last that he needed to keep some things behind his teeth even here.
Nepanthe and Mocker exchanged blank glances.
They could be pardoned. Even the wisest of the historians at Hellin Daimiel’s Rebsamen University were ignorant of the Nawami Crusades. Those had taken place long ago and far away, and had been so bitter that almost no one had survived to pass along their tale.
“Shut up!” Nepanthe snarled in sudden hatred. She was afraid he was telling the truth, that he did have some extraordinary claim on the Star Rider’s mercy. “Do your bragging after he puts me in. I won’t have to listen to it then.”
Mocker remained unnaturally quiet, his lips forming soundless words. Nepanthe laughed a laugh attared with wormwood. The man who believed in nothing, who mocked everything, who was so soaked in cynicism that he reeked of it, was appealing to false gods.
Where had he learned to pray?
The Star Rider dragged Varthlokkur from the coffin, stretched him out for continued care. Already the wizard appeared healthier.
Nepanthe’s potential savior bent over her corpse. She shriek-laughed victoriously.
But he merely moved a leg so he could get to Mocker.
Nepanthe shrieked again, though with less feeling. Resignation began to creep up on her.
The Old Man cursed. “You devil! You ungrateful fiend! I hope
they
roast your black soul…”
The easterners laughed. Having lost interest in bedeviling one another, they had begun baiting their captors.
“Murderer!” Nepanthe snarled, whirling on her husband. “Me. The child. Our blood’s on your soul. Unless you make him stop.” She started stalking him again, insane in her fear/rage.
The Old Man, stricken by his betrayal, plopped into a chair. He retreated into his memories, which were far clearer now than while he had been alive.
The Director had brought him here, and had used him pitilessly throughout the ages. He was being used mercilessly now. The man would know no remorse at his loss. He was just another tool in the shaper’s hands, caught in a situation where a choice of tools to be salvaged had to be made.
What epic of doom was he shaping now, that Varthlokkur and a fat criminal would be more valuable than he?
The Star Rider was an enigma even to he who knew him best, who knew how he had been condemned to this world and why, and with what mission. The man’s plans were shadowed mysteries, though of one thing the Old Man was sure. This night’s events had been engineered very carefully, perhaps beginning at some point decades in the past.
And the Old Man had a suspicion, growing toward conviction with the ages, that the Star Rider was, subtly, trying to evade the sentence imposed upon him. The desolation of Nawami, of Ilkazar… Neither had been needful. They were irrational excesses—unless they were part of some impenetrable plan.
Nepanthe stalked. Mocker retreated completely round the room before she reached the point where she could no longer sustain her anger. It soon faded into a diluted terror. He then took her into his arms and whispered the same comforting nothings and little jokes that had revived her spirit during bin Yousif’s raid on Iwa Skolovda. In the minutes that followed they made their peace, revived their love, forgave one another.
After a misty-voiced, “Doe’s Eyes, Dove’s Breast, will be better after second birth. Promise,” he faded from her company.
The Star Rider worked over the remaining corpses, his hands darting feverishly. Occasionally he made a quick check on Varthlokkur. The Old Man sat in silence, remembering, waiting. The easterners turned on one another again, but with flagging devotion.
Nepanthe’s feelings grew ever more pallid. She had little desire to do anything but wait. She seated herself beside the Old Man, took his hand.
The whistle and hum of the coffin stopped. The Old Man’s grasp tightened. “He can manage one more. For sure.” He said it with little force. He, as did she, wanted to live, but was drifting farther and farther from the shores of life. Before long, Nepanthe suspected, she wouldn’t care at all, might not heed the call to resurrection.
Which one? she wondered as the Star Rider tumbled Mocker onto the floor. Hope flared, but couldn’t ignite any will to survive. She turned to the Old Man. He had closed his eyes. Maybe it should be better that way, not knowing… Squeezing his hand, she closed her eyes, too.
The waiting went on forever.
A feeling of presence came toward the tower, lightly, as if some dread dark hunter of souls were snuffling an uncertain track.
Time awakened. Its plodding pace rapidly turned into a headlong plunge toward Hell. Faintly, Nepanthe heard the terror of the easterners. Maybe it wasn’t imagination. Maybe something
was
coming…
She was fading. She could sense it. Her grasp on the fabric of her existence was weakening, weakening…
A pity that her son would never live…
Blackness.
Happiness, because she was no longer afraid.
T
WENTY:
S
PRING, 997 AFE
A
FTERMATH
“A man can work up a powerful thirst climbing El Kabar,” Varthlokkur told Mocker. They faced one another over their first evening meal following their resurrection. “I’ve done it a dozen times.”
Mocker peered at t
his man who might be the father he had never known. He banished a surge of filial feeling, condemning it as unfounded, saccharine. “And in Shadowland,” he replied. “Self, having considered, believe same will be leading torture in Hell. Maybe after abstinence.”
He avoided the wizard’s glance by looking for the wine steward. They were far from comfortable with one another. But the steward wasn’t there to rescue him. Like the rest of the staff, the night had left him in wild confusion. None of them could get themselves organized.
“Yes. The Shadowland.”
The subject died there, with an unspoken agreement that words spoken then, and deeds done before, were best forgotten.
A child, bolder than his companions in a small party watching and giggling nearby, came over. He stared at Mocker for several seconds, then squealed and fled when the wanderer made an ugly face. “Am forever haunted by couthless, unwashed urchins,” Mocker grumbled, recalling Prost Kamenets’s Dragon Gate. That he accounted his point of no return, after which it had been too late to escape the strange, grim adventure that had led him to his father.
Surreptitiously, from beneath lowered brows, he studied Varthlokkur. Was some new evil growing in the nest of the wizard’s mind? He was who he was, and had done the things he had done. He had his wicked reputation.
Mocker’s hand strayed to the hilt of his sword. His gaze lanced about the hall in search of incipient treacheries.
His eyes met hers among unfamiliar faces. He froze. She seemed more beautiful than ever. More desirable, despite the pallor left by her trials. How sound was her mind? How bitter were her memories? Had she suffered any of the brain damage the Old Man had harped upon?
Could he and she abandon past anger and jealousy and salvage something from the wreckage others had made of their lives? Could they recover the happiness that had been theirs, so briefly, before Ravenkrak’s fall?
She sat beside him, placed a hand on his. She smiled as if nothing had happened the night before.
Their truce was holding. She remained willing to forget. “What became of the Star Rider?” she asked.