“Yes, Master.”
Orogastus opened the tattered cover, upon which much-faded gilt lettering could be seen. “The language is that which most of humanity speaks, but the spelling is archaic. That means it is very old indeed … Hmm! A History of the War. Which war, I wonder?”
He gently laid the talisman across the title page and besought knowledge of the book’s contents as before.
Herein is contained a history of the great magical conflict between the Vanished Ones and the Star Men, written some ninety hundreds after the fact by a descendant of a family of data-organizers who survived the Conquering Ice and dwelt in the Smoky Isles—
“Enough!” cried the sorcerer. His silver-gray eyes were wide with excitement as he took up the little book and turned the fragile pages with the greatest care. “Yes! Oh, yes! And rarity among rarities, it is a book written in the land of Raktum itself—before its wretched people embarked upon their career of piracy. This is a treasure indeed, Tolo. I shall have to study it most carefully.”
The little Prince, who had worked hard to conceal his boredom, now spoke eagerly. “I, too, won a treasure today, Master! In the Nut-Wars game you made for me. It was a great triumph!”
Orogastus laughed indulgently while examining the red book’s dimly scribed table of contents. “Such a game would have been impossible for me to fashion before, with my limited powers. But the two talismans taught me how to make it in the blink of an eye!… Of course, it is but a child’s toy.”
“The Yellow Voice mocked my victory,” Tolo said dolefully. “Master, he and the other Voices are jealous of me. When you aren’t about, they speak to me rudely, like a person of base blood, rather than treating me like a prince. They are sorry that you made me your heir. I am sure they thought that one of them would be the next Master of Tuzamen.”
Orogastus burst out laughing and closed the History. “Oh, they did, did they? And have they done any real harm to you, lad? Aside from denying you the deference due to one of your royal birth?”
Tolo looked away, his feigned hurt feelings abruptly changed to sullenness. “No, but—”
“And how do you treat my acolytes?” The sorcerer’s voice was now serious. “Are you gracious, as a true prince must always be to his inferiors, or are you toplofty and boorish? Do you realize that my three Voices are my most loyal friends? They rescued me from my exile on the Sempiternal Icecap because their minds were sensitive enough to hear my magical call, and they have served me unselfishly ever since. Much of my success would have been impossible without their help.”
The Prince peeped up at the sorcerer with innocent blue eyes. “But now that you have the talismans, you will not need their help so much. I have heard them speak of it among themselves, when they did not know I was listening.”
Orogastus frowned for a moment. But then his face cleared and again he laughed. “You do not understand the ways of grown-ups. If you would please me, treat the Voices as loving older brothers. Be polite and kind to them and act modestly. Then you will see that their manners will improve.”
“If you say so, Master.” Tolo sighed. “But I still think—”
“Obey me!” The sorcerer’s affability fell away like a discarded cloak. “And now you must go. I wish you to play a new game. Request of my Yellow Voice a goodly map of the Western World, and study it for the rest of the afternoon and all of this evening. Look especially upon Raktum and the neighboring Labornok coast, and decide how you would invade the land of the Two Thrones if you commanded a pirate armada. Work hard. I will summon you tomorrow, and we will play the game together.”
The Prince brightened. “An invasion! That sounds like great fun!”
Orogastus waved a hand in dismissal. The boy bowed his head and trotted obediently away. The sorcerer opened the door for Tolo, using a simple bit of magic, then sat brooding when he was once again alone.
Permitting the little Prince to stay with him had been a decision without logic—one that Orogastus realized was certainly rash and possibly even dangerous. But Tolivar had seemed such a forlorn waif on the ship, frail of body, sharp of wit, so at odds with his robust older brother and sister and seeming not to care that he was separated from his royal parents. The hint of a magical aura about him, and the child’s frank hero worship of Orogastus, even in the latter’s guise of a repulsive old man, had touched some odd vulnerability in the sorcerer. Not since his first meeting with Haramis had he felt so touched, so … ruled by unreason.
In the lonely, discontented little Prince, Orogastus recognized long-buried reflections of another misfit child—a naked foundling taken grudgingly into the household of the venerable Bondanus, who was the greatest sorcerer in the known world and the Star Master of Castle Tenebrose in the seaside city of Merika. That wretched baby, nursed by a drunken slut and begrudged the filthy rags that had clothed him, had nevertheless grown into a strapping lad who earned his precarious keep as a togar-herd and a scullion. He was always maltreated and half starved—until the unforgettable day that his intelligence and his unformed but powerful psychic aura caught the attention of the Star Master of Tuzamen.
The child Orogastus had also been eight years of age when he was nominated as the sorcerer’s apprentice.
Bondanus was a harsh mentor but a fair one. He had never shown love for his young protégé nor even fondness; nevertheless he made it clear that Orogastus would inherit all of his magical secrets, and succeed him as Master of the desolate little northern nation. Orogastus became both the pupil and the personal servant of the aging wizard, laboring and studying with naïve enthusiasm, never noticing that the Master isolated himself more and more from the affairs of the country, relegating its rule to a gaggle of predatory and homicidal warlords who carved Tuzamen into a patchwork of tiny, hostile fiefs unified by nothing save their mutual antagonism.
While the Tuzameni peasantry lived in dreary hopelessness and its merchants fled to more prosperous lands, the Master spent his final years meditating upon the ancient Star philosophy of which he had been a lone proponent. When Bondanus finally lay dying, he bequeathed to his apprentice Castle Tenebrose (by then a nearly uninhabited ruin), a small trove of ancient magical apparatus which the old wizard considered to be of only minor importance, and the most precious possession he owned—a platinum medallion in the shape of a multirayed star. This emblem, hung about the neck of Orogastus at the culmination of a frightful initiation ceremony, had given the young man full membership in the ancient Society of the Star.
At that time Orogastus was eight-and-twenty years of age. The ordeal of initiation turned his hair pure white.
Orogastus discovered soon enough that the villainous warlords of Tuzamen would not accept him as their sovereign. The dead Bondanus had ignored them for too long. Orogastus attempted to cow the people with magic, especially with the command of the storm that was his special area of expertise. But the stubborn barons only barricaded themselves in their rustic fortresses when he would have compelled them to serve him, and the commoners were too dull-witted, too ground down by hardship, and too poor to be of any value to an ambitious sorcerer.
For three years he studied the collection of antiquated machines that Bondanus had always dismissed as trivial. Orogastus decided they were nothing of the sort, and in time he found his loyalty shifting from the esoteric, unsettling (and often capricious) magic of the Star Society to the more practical Dark Powers named Aysee Lyne, Inturnal Bataree, and Bahkup. These three deities ruled the Vanished Ones’ miraculous devices; and if they were properly invoked, they gave their single worshiper the grace to wreak marvels more immediately useful than the secrets of the Star.
The most important of the machines contained information that eventually led Orogastus to discover another cache of the Vanished Ones in a remote ruined city near the headwaters of the White River, far to the west in Dorok country. There he found magical weapons, as well as many contraptions that would impress and intimidate the simpleminded. Bringing this booty back to
Castle Tenebrose, he began once again his thwarted campaign to make himself the true Master of Tuzamen. He might have succeeded if Crown Prince Voltrik of Labornok had not come visiting just then—and changed the direction of Orogastus’s life.
Voltrik was a kindred restless soul, a man frustrated by having to wait overlong for his senile uncle to die and relinquish the throne. The Crown Prince suggested that Orogastus extend his vision beyond the miserable wilderness of Tuzamen into the rich Peninsula lying to the south. Together, they might found an empire through conquest!
And besides, the savants of Labornok knew of many other ruined cities, where the sorcerer might find more of the magical gadgets he so coveted …
So Orogastus abandoned the land of his birth. Seventeen years later, as the newly crowned King Voltrik’s Grand Minister of State, he participated in the invasion and conquest of Ruwenda—only to have all his glorious schemes come to naught because of the interference of Ruwenda’s three young Princesses. Protected by a magical Black Trillium even more ancient than the Star, the triplet girls each embarked upon a quest that led to the finding of a mysterious talisman. The three talismans, when assembled into a single dread Sceptre of Power, had turned Orogastus’s own sorcery against him. In some incomprehensible manner he had been cast into exile in the Land of Fire and Ice rather than killed by the Sceptre.
“How?” he mused, idly turning the brittle pages of the little red book. “How was it done? The Princesses wanted to destroy me. I know that was their intent! And yet I did not die …”
Absently, he fingered the silvery coronet clamped to his brow, the talisman adorned with three grotesque faces that was named the Three-Headed Monster.
“What unknown god took pity upon me and spared me so that I might return to the world and take up again the reins of the ambition denied me so long ago?… Master of Tuzamen! I am that now, and the nation that was a barbarous laughingstock now enjoys a modest measure of prosperity and prestige. I am at the threshold of my greatest scheme of all, which will climax in the conquest of the world. I have two magical talismans, and one day I may have all three, and the limitless power they promise!… But what is the answer to the mystery of my survival in the Kimilon?”
Look in the book.
Orogastus gave a great start and he clapped one hand to the hilt of the Three-Lobed Burning Eye hanging at his waist. But it was not that talisman that had spoken. The voice in his mind was a new one, no doubt emanating from Queen Anigel’s coronet.
With fingers that shook slightly, he riffled the crumbling parchment pages until he caught sight of a portion of text that glowed, even in the bright lamplight.
“Cynosure?…”
The strange word leapt out at him, and he read, engrossed, for many minutes. When he understood at last, he lifted his eyes and touched the coronet.
“Talisman! Show me this wondrous Cynosure that preserved my life and drew me to the Kimilon!”
A vision of a black hexagon came into his mind.
This is the Great Cynosure, created by the Star Men twelve times ten hundreds ago to counteract the Threefold Sceptre of Power.
He shouted with excitement. “Ah! I remember! I remember now! The world seemed to explode when the Sceptre of Power smote me, and I thought I was dead. But before my senses left me, I perceived that thing! And it preserved my life, did it? I never saw it when I awakened. Where was it hidden?… Would it draw me safe again to the Land of Fire and Ice if the Archimage Haramis used the power of her talisman against me?”
No. The Great Cynosure was taken from the Kimilon by the Archimage Iriane, who gave it to the Archimage Haramis, who placed it in the Chasm of Durance at the suggestion of the sindona Teacher.
Orogastus was staggered. What was this? Another Archimage? And the sindona … All reference books he had read said that the prodigious living statues of the Vanished Ones had been destroyed in the war of the Conquering Ice.
Read on, sighed the voice inside his head.
He lowered his eyes to the glowing pages of the little red book—and it was all there: the survival of certain members of the Archimagical College, the subterranean Place of Knowledge with its guardian sindona, situated in remote Lamarilu, north of the Thorny Hell of Ruwenda … and even the Chasm.
His vitals turned to ice as he read of the terrible place where the ancient Star Men had been imprisoned. And Haramis had put the Cynosure there.
“Can I get hold of it?” he asked the talisman. “Can I remove it from the Chasm and hide it in some place of safety?”
Only an Archimage may enter the Place of Knowledge without invitation. It is so pervaded with ancient magic that even the power of two talismans may not countermand it.
Orogastus swore a foul oath blaspheming the Dark Powers. “Can the Cynosure be destroyed in some other way?”
The Archimagical College can destroy it, working in concert. The Star Council, who made it, can also destroy it. But the Star Council no longer exists. You are the only Star Man, and since you are but one, you do not possess the power.
“If—if I could initiate more into the Society of the Star, how many of us would there have to be to destroy the Cynosure?”
At least three.
“Three …” Orogastus took a vast breath. He slumped like a creature relaxing from pursuit and wiped his streaming brow with one sleeve of his dirty gown. “Three,” he repeated softly.
The red book had lost its preternatural glow. For a long time he stared at it unseeing, while memories swirled chaotically in his brain. Even now, Orogastus could scarcely think about his initiation into the Star without quailing. But the old books and regalia for the ceremony still existed. Orogastus had not bothered to take them along when he had abandoned Castle Tenebrose and accompanied Voltrik. For seven-and-twenty years they lay hidden in an old secret cubbyhole in the castle, and when Orogastus returned from the Kimilon he had found them still safe.
He could create more Star Men! Initiate the Voices! It would take intensive preparation, for the ceremony was so horrendous that unfit novices might be driven insane or even frightened to death. But these Voices were strong and intelligent, much more worthy than his first trio of acolytes, who had perished at the hands of the Princesses. How long might it take to get the Voices ready? A ten-night? Two?… But the damned war would demand his attention before that! There was not enough time to go back to Castle Tenebrose—
He realized that someone was knocking upon the library doors with increasing vigor. Almighty Bahkup! He had forgotten about the meeting with the turncoat Labornoki nobleman, Osorkon.
Orogastus gestured and the great portals swung open. A man entered, wearing a full suit of black-enameled armor and a heavy raffin-skin cape. His open helm was surmounted by the image of a fierce looru with wings widespread, and the same device, embroidered in gold and crimson, adorned his black silken surcoat. He held in his mailed fist a sword nearly as long as he was tall.
“Are you so uneasy in my presence, Lord Osorkon?” the sorcerer remarked, smiling. “True, we have not seen each other in twelve years, and we were not close comrades then. But the times have changed. We both need one another very much these days.” He closed the little red book and motioned for the Labornoki to be seated.
Osorkon sheathed his sword with a singing hiss, then hauled off his helmet and set it on the table.
“It’s these pirates I do not trust, wizard! Every step of the way from the docks to the palace, my men and I were harried by gangs of foulmouthed churls who jeered at us and flung snowballs—and worse—without once being deterred by our so-called escort of pirate-knights! Did we not come here at your express invitation? And yet, when we entered this tarted-up den of thieves, we were received without courtesy, forced to hang about in a frigid anteroom for hours, and offered neither refreshment nor so much as an invitation to make use of the garderobe!”
Orogastus wagged his head in sympathy and pointed. “The small door, right between the two pillars.”
“Nev
er mind!… That surly bastard Jorot finally condescended to receive our delegation. My comrades Soratik, Vitar, Pomizel, and Nunkaleyn of Wum are conferring with Jorot and his admirals now, making certain that our assault by land will coordinate with the sea invasion. And I, as you requested, am here to meet with you.”
The sorcerer snapped his fingers and a steaming crock of potent ilisso liquor appeared on the table, accompanied by two large mugs. There was also a loaf of hot bread, a platter of sausages smoking from the grill, a firkin of pickles, and a salver of sliced nutcake spread with cream cheese.
“Let me make small amends for the failure of Raktumian hospitality,” Orogastus said. “I fear that the pirates are feckless amateurs at diplomacy. The very notion of alliances is foreign to their culture.”
“They’re a pack of snotty bandits, you mean.” Osorkon stripped off his metal gauntlets, dropped them to the flagstone floor with twin clunks, and blew on his hands. They were blue with cold. He quaffed a warming draft of the liquor, then helped himself to the buffet. “I don’t understand why we had to bring Raktum into this scheme anyhow. With my three thousand men and your army—plus some supernatural fireworks, like the kind you had going for us back when we invaded Ruwenda—we can whip the Two-Throne loyalists of Derorguila handily. No need to involve these foppish buccaneers.”
Orogastus sniffed a pickle and crunched it up with strong white teeth. In no way was he about to admit that his Tuzameni “army” consisted of only about sixteen hundred men, commanded by nine warlords whose military experience consisted mainly of the ambush of unwary peddlers, livestock rustling, and smash-and-grab raids on each other’s villages.
“We need the pirate navy for the swift transport of my men and my magical weapons,” the sorcerer explained earnestly to his guest. “The Raktumian warships will ensure that no reinforcements reach Derorguila by way of the sea. The Raktumian flame catapults will neutralize the forts at the entrance to the enemy harbor, and the eight thousand pirate warriors will ensure the swift capitulation of the Two Thrones. It is vital that Derorguila fall as quickly as possible. If the fighting is prolonged, there is a chance that the Archimage Haramis will find some way to come to the aid of her sister.”