“Somebody’s gonna pay for this.” He inspected the chopped corpse carefully. “El Murid has got himself one big debt.”
The hand of the Harish had reached into Vorgreberg before.
There was nothing he could do there. He slipped out, sat down with his back against the door. He laid his sword across his lap and waited for his brother.
One oil lamp flickered on Ragnarson’sdesk. He bent close to read the latest protest from El Murid’s embassy. They sure could bitch about petty shit.
What the hell was Haroun up to?
Haroun was what he was, doing what he thought necessary. Even when he made life difficult, Bragi bore him no ill will. But when bin Yousif stopped conforming to his own nature....
There hadn’t been a serious protest in a year. And Valther said there had been no terrorist incursions for several. Nor had many bands of Royalist partisans passed through Kavelin bound for the camps. Nor had Customs reported the capture of any guerrilla contraband.
It was spooky.
Ragnarson wasn’t pleased when people changed character inexplicably.
“Derel. Any word from Karak Strabger?”
“None, sir.”
“Something’s wrong up there. I’d better....”
“Gjerdrum can handle it, sir.”
Ragnarson’s right hand fluttered about nervously. “I suppose. I wish he’d write more often.”
“I used to hear the same from his mother when he was at the university.”
“It’d risk letters falling into unfriendly hands anyway.” The Queen’s condition had to remain secret. For the good of the state, for his own good-if he didn’t want his wife planning to cut his throat.
Bragi didn’t know how to manage it, but the news absolutely had to be kept from Elana.
Rumors striking alarmingly near the truth ran the streets already.
He massaged his forehead, crushed his eyelids with the heels of his hands. “This last contribution from Breidenbach. You done the figures yet?”
“It looks good. There’s enough, but it’ll be risky.”
“Damned. There’s got to be an honest, legal way to increase revenues.”
In the past, when he had been on the other end, Bragi’s favorite gripes had been government and taxes. Taxes especially. He had seen them as a gigantic protection racket. Pay off or have soldiers on your front porch.
“By increasing the flow of trade.”
Economics weren’t his forte, but Ragnarson asked anyway. “How do we manage that?”
“Lower the transit tax.” Prataxis grinned.
“Oh, go to hell. The more you talk, the more I get confused. If
I had the men I’d do it the Trolledyngjan way. Go steal it from the nearest foreigner who couldn’t defend himself.”
Prataxis’s reply was forestalled by a knock.
“Enter,” Ragnarson growled.
Jarl Ahring stepped in. His face was drawn.
Premonition gripped Ragnarson. “What is it? What’s happened, Jarl?”
Ahring gulped several false starts before babbling, “At your house. Somebody.... Assassins.”
“But.... What...?” He didn’t understand. Assassins? Why would...? Maybe robbers? There was no reason for anyone to attack his home.
“Your son.... Gundar.... He came to the barracks. He was hysterical. He said everybody was dead. Then he said Haaken told him to have me find you. I sent twenty men over, then came here.”
“You checked it out?”
“No. I came straight here.”
“Let’s go.”
“I brought you a horse.”
“Good.” Ragnarson strapped on the sword that was never out of reach, followed Ahring at a run. And then at a wild gallop through deserted streets.
A quarter mile short of home Ragnarson shouted, “Hold up!” A patch of white in the park had caught his eye.
The man was on the verge of dying, but he recognized Ragnarson. Surprise shown through agony. He tried to use a dagger.
Bragi took it away, studied him. Soon he was dead. “Loss of blood,” Ragnarson observed. “Somebody cut him bad.” He handed the knife to Ahring.
“Harish kill-dagger.”
“Yeah. Come on.”
The news was spreading. Lean, sallow Michael Trebilcock had arrived already, and Valther and his wife, Mist, showed up as Bragi did. Their house stood just up the lane. Neighbors clogged the yard. Ahring’s troops were keeping them out of the house.
Bragi took the dagger from Ahring, passed it to Valther’s wife. “It is consecrated?”
That tall, incredibly beautiful woman closed her oval eyes.
She moaned suddenly, hurled the blade away. A soldier recovered it.
Mist took two deep breaths, said, “Yes. To your name. But not in Al Rhemish.”
“Ah?” Ragnarson wasn’t surprised. “Where, then?”
“It’s genuine. A Harish knife. Under your name is another, without blood.”
“Stolen blade. I thought so.”
“What? How?” Ahring asked.
“There still some here?” Bragi asked. Harish assassins usually worked in teams. And they didn’t leave their wounded behind.
“Yes sir,” a soldier replied. “Upstairs.”
“Come,” Ragnarson told Ahring, Valther, and Mist. “You too, Michael.”
Trebilcock was a strange young man. He had come from the Rebsamen with Gjerdrum when Ragnarson’s aide had graduat-ed from that university. His father, Wallice Trebilcock of the House of Braden in Czeschin of the Bedelian League, had died shortly before, leaving him an immense fortune.
He didn’t care about money, or anything but getting near the makers and shakers of history.
Ragnarson had felt a paternal attraction from their first meeting, so the youth had slipped into his circle through the side door.
Ragnarson, though unaware of the extent of his losses, was already in a form of shock. It was a protective reaction against emotion, a response learned the hard way, at fifteen. It had been then that disaster and despair had first overtaken him, then that he had learned that swords don’t exclusively bite the men on the other side.
He had learned the night he had watched his father die, belly opened by an axe....
Others had died since, good friends and brothers-in-arms. He had learned, and learned, and learned-to stifle emotions till the smoke had cleared, till the dust had settled, till the enemy had been put away.
He knelt by the dead man in the hallway, opening his clothing. “Here.” He tapped the man over his heart.
“What?” Valther asked. “He has the tattoo. They always do.”
“Look closer,” Ragnarson growled.
Valther peered intently at a tricolor tattoo, three cursiveletters intertwined. They meant “Beloved of God.” Their bearer was guaranteed entry into Paradise. “What?”
“You see it?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Valther didn’t reply.
“He’s dead, Valther. They fade with the spirit.”
“Oh. Yes.”
So they did, with a genuine Harish assassin, supposedly to indicate that the soul had ascended. Some cynics, though, claimed they vanished to avoid an admission that a Cultist had failed.
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble here,” Bragi observed. “But for that, the frame would’ve worked.” It should have. Not many men outside the Harish knew that secret. Most of those were associates of Haroun bin Yousif.
Ragnarson’s mysterious friend had researched the Cult thoroughly. He’d had to. He had been its top target for a generation.
And he was still alive.
“There’s a trap here,” said Bragi.
“What now?” Valther demanded.
“You’ve got the mind for this. Suppose these are part of the plan? If they failed, and we didn’t jump to the conclusion that El Murid was responsible? Who would you suspect then?”
“Considering their apparent orig
ins....”
“Haroun. Of course. There’re other folks like them, but who else would be interested?”
“A double frame?”
“Levels. Always there’re these levels. Direct attack is too unsubtle....”
“Is something beginning?”
“Something has begun. We’ve been into it for a long time. Too many impossible things have happened already.”
Bragi rose, kicked the corpse, growled, “Get this out of my house.” Then he dropped to a knee beside Haaken. He slid an arm around his brother’s shoulders, crushed him to his chest. “Haaken, Haaken, it was an evil day when we came south.”
Tears still rolled down into the wild dark tangle of Haaken’s beard.
He sniffed. “We should’ve stood and died.” He sniffed again, wrapped both arms around Bragi. “Bragi, let me get the kids andwe just go home. Now, and the hell with everything. Forget it all. Just you and me and Reskird and the kids, and leave these damned southrons to their own mercies.”
“Haaken....”
“Bragi, it’s bad. It’s cruel. Please. Let’s just go. They can have everything I’ve got. Just take me home. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Haaken....” He rose.
“Don’t go in. Bragi, please.”
“Haaken, I have to.” There were tears in his own eyes. He knew part of it now. Elana. She was a loss more dire than his father. Mad Ragnar had chosen his death. Elana.... She was a victim of his profession.
Blackfang wouldn’t move. And now the younger children, Ainjar and Helga, clung to his legs, bawling, asking for Mama, and what was wrong with Inger and Soren?
Ragnarson asked a question with his eyes. Haaken nodded.
“My babies? No. Not them too?”
Haaken nodded again.
The tears faded. Ragnarson turned slowly, surveying the faces in the hall. Every eye turned from the flame raging in his. Hatred was too mild a word.
Blood would flow. Souls would spill shrieking into the outer darkness. And he wouldn’t be gentle. He would be cruel.
“Move aside, Haaken.”
“Bragi....”
“Move.”
Haaken moved. “You lead, Bragi,” he said. “I’ll follow anywhere.”
Ragnarson briefly rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’re probably dead men, Haaken. But somebody will carry the torches to light our path into Hell.” For an instant he was startled by his own words. Their father had said the same thing just before his death. “Valther! Find out who did this.”
“Bragi....”
“Do it.” He shoved into the bedroom.
Valther started to follow him. Mist seized his arm.
She had the Power. Once she had been a Princess of the Dread Empire. She knew what lay behind that door.
Ragnarson had his emotions under control again. He kept hand on sword hilt to remind himself. This was a battlefield. These had fallen in a war....
“Oh.”
Haaken tried to pull him out.
“No. Valther. Come here.”
The man with his pants half on was Valther’s brother Turran.
Their eyes met over the corpse, and much went unsaid-words which couldn’t be spoken lest blood be their price.
“Take care of him.” Ragnarson moved round the bed to his wife. First he dropped to one knee, then he sat. He held her hand and remembered. Twenty years. Sixteen of them married. Hard times and good, fighting and loving.
That was a long time. Nearly half his life. There were a lot of memories.
Behind him, Valther shed tears on his brother’s chest.
An hour passed before Bragi looked up.
Rolf Preshka, Captain of the Palace Guards, sat on the edge of the bed. His grief mirrored Ragnarson’s.
Bragi had never known for sure, but he had suspected. Rolf had joined him when Elana had. They had been partners before.... But there hadn’t been a moment’s dishonor since. He knew Preshka that well.
There was that, beneath the grief, which said that Rolf, too, meant to extract payment in blood and pain.
But Preshka was in no shape for it. He had lost a lung in the war. He refused to die, but he was never healthy either. That was why he held the unstrenuous Palace command.
Later still, Nepanthe came. She cried some. Then she and Mist calmed the children and moved them to Valther’s house.
“You are my hand that reaches beyond the grave,” Bragi told Ragnar before he left, and went on to explain what he knew and felt. Things Ragnar should know in case the next band of assassins succeeded.
The boy had to grow up fast.
Throughout the night Michael Trebilcock observed in silence. Trebilcock remained an enigma. He was a sponge, soaking up others’ pain and joy and never revealing any emotion himself.
Once, though, he came and rested a comforting hand on Bragi’s shoulder. For Trebilcock that was a lot.
Before sunrise all Bragi’s old comrades had come, except Reskird, whose regiment was on exercise around Lake Turntine.
Shortly before dawn, thunder rolled over the mountains. Lightning walked the cloudless night.
It was an omen.
SEVEN: The Old Dread Returns
The wind never ceased its howl and moan through the wild, angry mountains called The Dragon’s Teeth. It tore at Castle Fangdred with talons of ice and teeth of winter. The stronghold was the only evidence that Man had ever braved these savage mountains. The furious wind seemed bent on eradication.
It was a lonely castle, far from any human habitation. Only two men dwelt there now, and but one of those could be called alive.
He was old, that man, yet young. Four centuries had he lived, yet he looked not a tenth of that. He stalked Fangdred’s empty, dusty halls, alone and lonely, waiting.
Varthlokkur.
His name. The west’s dread.
Varthlokkur. The Silent One Who Walks With Grief. Also called The Empire Destroyer.
This man, this wizard, could erase kingdoms as a student wipes a slate.
Or such was his reputation. He was powerful, and had engineered the downfall of Ilkazar, yet he was a man. He had his limitations.
He was tall and thin, with earth-toned skin and haunted mahogany eyes.
He was waiting. For a woman.
He wanted nothing to do with the world.
But sometimes the world assailed him and he had to react, to protect his place in it, to secure his own tomorrows.
The other man sat on a stone throne, before a mirror, in a chamber high atop a tower. Its only door was sealed by spells which even Varthlokkur couldn’t fathom. He wasn’t dead, but neither was he alive. He, too, waited.
A malaise had descended on Varthlokkur. Evil stalkedabroad again. Not the usual evil, everyday evil, but the Evil that abided, awaiting its moment to engulf.
This evil had struck before, and had been driven home.
It waxed again, and its burning eyes sought a target for its wrath.
Varthlokkur performed his divinations. He conjured his familiar demons and sped them over the earth on wings of nightmare. He sang the dark songs of necromancy, calling up the dead. He wheedled from them secrets of tomorrow.
It was what they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell him that inspired dread.
Something was happening.
It had its foundation in Shinsan. Once again the Dread Empire was preparing to make its will its destiny. But there was more.
For a while Varthlokkur concentrated on the west and unearthed more evidence of sprouting evil. Down south, at Baxendala, where the Dread Empire had been turned before....
If one word could describe Varthlokkur, it might be doleful. His mother had been burned by the Wizards of Ilkazar. His foster parents had passed away before he was ten. Obsessed with vengeance for his mother, he had made devil’s bargains in Shinsan-and had rued his decision a thousand times. The Princes Thaumaturge had taught him, then used him to shatter forever the political cohesion of the Empire.
And
then? Four centuries of loneliness in a world terrified of him, yet constantly conspiring to use him. Four centuries of misery, awaiting the one pleasant shadow falling across his destiny, the woman who could share his life and love.
And there had been pain and sadness in that, too. She had taken another husband-his own son, from a marriage of convenience, ignorant of his paternity, by then known under the name. Mocker....
Those blind hags, the Norns, snickered and wove the threads of destiny in an astounding, treacherous warp and woof.
But he had beaten them. He and Nepanthe had come to an understanding. He had the sorcery to enable it.
Upon her he had placed the same wizardries that had made him virtually immortal. In time Mocker would perish. Then she would share Varthlokkur’s destiny.
So he waited, in his hidden stronghold, and was sad andlonely, till the undertides of old evil washed against his consciousness and excited him.
He performed his divinations, and they were clouded, irresolute, shifting, revolving on but one absolute axis. Something wicked was afoot.
The first nibble of the beast would be at the underbelly of that little kingdom at the juncture of the Kapenrungs and Mountains of M’Hand. At Kavelin.
His final necromancy indicated that he had to get there quickly.
He prepared transfer spells that would shift him in seconds.
Thunder stalked the morning over the knife-edged ridges of the Kapenrungs. Lightning sabered the skies. A hard north wind gnawed at the people and houses of Vorgreberg.
In the house on Lieneke Lane, sad and angry men paused to glance outside and, shivering, ask one another what was happening.
Suddenly, in the bedroom where the lips of Death had sipped, a mote of darkness appeared. Preshka spied it first. “Bragi.” He pointed.
It hung in the air heart high, halfway between bed and door.
Ragnarson eyed it. It began growing, a little black cloud taking birth, becoming more misted and tenuous as it expanded. Within, a left-handed mandala revolved slowly, remaining two-dimensional and face-on no matter from what angle Ragnarson studied it.
“Ahring! Get some men in here.”
In seconds twenty men surrounded the growing shadow, shaking but ready. Their faces were pale, but they had faced sorcery before, at Baxendala.
The mandala spun faster. The cloud grew larger, forming a pillar. That pillar assumed the shape of a man. The mandala pulsed like a beating heart. For an instant, vaguely, Bragi thought he saw a tired face at the column’s capital.