Tasi-feng greeted him with, “Lord, Hsu Shen says there were soldiers of the empire in the band that attacked him.
“Ours?”
“They wore our armor. Their badges were of the Seventeenth.”
“Your missing men?”
“Perhaps. I told him to keep it quiet till we can explain it.”
“Good. Shift those two intercept groups around. Tell them to double-time and get into position to stop the party. Tell Hsu Shen to go after them and resume contact. I’ll want a portal open out there when our people are in position. I want to see this myself.”
“As you will, Lord.”
Shih-ka’i observed while the legion’s Candidates went through the clothing and effects recovered from the enemy dead. Each man had borne much what a soldier could be expected to carry: the tools of his trade and a few personal items that set him off from a thousand more just like him. The things gave no clues. Shih-ka’i examined the lettering on an old coin. He had not seen its like before. “What would you say this head portrays?” he asked one of the Candidates.
“Some sort of fabulous monster, Lord?”
“Perhaps.” When he looked directly at it, Shih-ka’i felt an increase in his awareness of the existence of something in the east.
Tasi-feng appeared. “Lord, there seems to have been a continuous, low-grade emanation of the Power since some time before the first attack. The source appears to be near the heart of your circle.”
“So.” Shih-ka’i reflected momentarily. “Let’s take no chances. Establish portals connecting us with the other legions. One cohort each to be ready for immediate transfer here.”
“Lord, we’re already straining ourselves with the portals we... As you will, Lord.”
“Yes. The remainder of each legion is to be placed on first alert. Begin assembling a package that can be sent to Lord Kuo instantly should anything dire happen.”
“Lord? You think there’s that much danger?”
“No. But I don’t believe in leaving anything to chance. Keep the package at a portal. Update it continuously.”
“As you will, Lord.”
“Also, I want a battery of ballistae readied for long-range work. Let the Candidates handle it. Start now. It’ll take them several hours to prepare all the spells.”
“Accuracy or destruction, Lord?”
“Destruction.”
Shih-ka’i went to the room where the legion’s surgeons were at work. One paused to say, “There’s something strange here, Lord. We can’t be sure, what with the desert heat and so on, but these men look like they’ve been dead for a long time.”
“Oh?”
“Look. Ostensibly, the bodies are less than an hour old. Some of the organs should still show signs of life.”
Shih-ka’i looked away from the open cadaver. “I thought you might find something of the sort. Take a good look at the blood.”
“Lord?”
“See if the blood is dead or alive. Then make a guess at how long it’s been dead.” He turned to leave. He had to get out before his gorge rose and betrayed his dignity.
Tasi-feng stood in the doorway. “You’ve discovered something, Lord?”
“I think they were dead before they attacked. They have the look. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen their like. I imagine it was before you were born. The Demon Prince experimented with reanimated soldiers. He shelved the idea. Control was too cumbersome.”
Tasi-feng could not keep his horror hidden behind his mask. He took a moment to control himself. “The new portals are open, Lord Ssu-ma. Our support is standing by. We’re still trying to contact Lord Kuo’s party. He’s reconnoitering the Matayangan border. The parties you sent to establish a blocking position are ahead of the enemy and trying to locate a suitable site.”
“Very well. I’m returning to my quarters. Call me when they open their portal.”
He had to get away for a few minutes, to conquer the animal in him. He hadn’t realized there would be so much difference between the training and battle fields. Once in his quarters he seated himself on a small carpet. He used the basic tool given every child legionnaire. He went through the Soldier’s Ritual, the calming mantra-prayers with which soldiers began and ended their days. He regained himself.
Lord Kuo was right, he thought. There is something here. Maybe something bigger than Wen-chin suspected.
Pan ku came in. “Oh. Excuse me, Lord.”
“I’ve just finished, Pan ku. Have you taken the pulse of the legion?”
“They’re bored, Lord. They resent being stuck on a dead frontier. Today seems to have perked them up.”
“No serious problems?”
“No. This is an old legion. A good one. Well trained and disciplined, with conscientious centurions and decurions. It’ll do what you ask of it.”
“Good. Good, Thank you, Pan ku.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, Lord?”
“Don your battle gear. We’re going into the desert.”
Shih-ka’i flashed through the portal an hour later. He found that his hunters had chosen a good position in which to wait. After surveying their dispositions, he prepared a number of magicks. “Just in case,” he told Pan ku.
The soldier nodded. He was familiar with his master’s obsession with being prepared.
Two dust clouds came closer and closer. Hsu Shen was doing a perfect job of pushing without pushing too hard. Shih-ka’i took a look off the back side of the low hill where he waited. Dust clouds were converging on a point several miles eastward. “Setting an ambush of his own,” he murmured.
Pan ku came round the hill. “Lord, they just had word from Lord Lun-yu. Two of those bodies jumped up and tried to kill him.”
“Uhm? I should have warned him. He’s all right?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Good.”
Their quarry moved into the pocket. Shih-ka’i counted twenty-five. Someone said, “I thought they were supposed to be carrying their dead?”
Shih-ka’i did not tell the man that the dead were walking again. That none of the attackers had been alive. He gave the signal.
His men revealed themselves. The party below halted. They were badly outnumbered, and Hsu Shen was right behind them.
Shih-ka’i stared. Hsu Shen had been right. Three were legionnaires.
The group formed a turtle, ready to fight. Shih-ka’i’s men closed in. The surrounded men dropped.
Shih-ka’i felt something electric stir the air. “Down!” he bellowed. “Everybody on the ground!” He whipped his mind into his bag of prepared tricks.
What looked like a great black boot sole blotted out the sky. Its heel descended swiftly. For an instant Shih-ka’i pictured himself as a bug about to be crushed.
He loosed a spell.
The air whined with the sound of a thousand giant whetstones scraping steel, then the cracking of a million tiny whips. He looked up. The boot had vanished.
“Get down there and carve those people up before they come alive again!” he thundered.
He did not wait to see if his orders were carried out. He closed his eyes and reentered the realm of spell. He seized one, pictured himself hurling a spear. He painted a big bull’s-eye on the map from the fortress wall.
Thunder rolled across the cloudless wasteland. A flash extinguished the sun. Shih-ka’i opened his eyes. A thousand dust devils danced across the barrens like frenzied, drugged dancers, often colliding and collapsing. A few minutes later he heard a remote rumble. He smiled into his mask. “That’ll make you keep your head down.”
He waited for several minutes, his Tervola-senses extended. Nothing came. His enemy seemed cowed.
For the moment, he thought. Only for the moment.
He joined his men. “We’d do better to burn the bodies,” he told Hsu Shen. “But there seems to be a shortage of wood.”
The Tervola nodded, untouched by Shih-ka’i’s dry humor. He was a man nearly Shih-ka’i’s age, one of the o
ld guard banished by Lord Kuo. He too remembered the Demon Prince’s experiments. The dead could keep rising and rising, and could recruit their foes to their own cause. They could not be permitted to win battles. They would become stronger with each victory.
“Send those three back to the fortress,” Shih-ka’i said, indicating the dead legionnaires. “We’ll have that necromancer of Lun-yu’s call up their shades.”
His neck hairs prickled. He opened up, feeling for some new threat. There was none. He nodded to himself. Something was watching.
He went up the hill and looked to the east. Somewhere out there. In all that nothing. He studied the dust raised by retreating foemen, projecting their lines of march.
There? That heat haze hidden hump on the horizon? He oriented himself by the map. Yes. The hump would be smack in the middle of the suspect area.
“You should have kept your head down, friend,” he murmured. “Now we see you. Now we’re coming for a closer look.”
A wind rose. It was hard and hot and dry. The dust it carried gnawed like sandpaper. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i ignored it. He stood on that hill like a sturdy little statue, immobile and unmovable. Behind his mask his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
3 Year 1016afe
Gathering of the Mighty
THE WOMAN FOLLOWED her husband through a corridor in Castle Krief, the Royal Palace in Vorgreberg, the capital of Kavelin, one of the Lesser Kingdoms. Her steps were plodding, rolling. An unkind person would have called her walk a waddle. She was very pregnant. And very distracted. She caught herself falling behind, hurried to catch up. Her husband paused, a slight frown crinkling his brow. “Nepanthe, what’s the matter?”
“What? Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing? I don’t believe it. You’ve been brooding since we got here. You’ve been dragging around puckered up like a mouth full of crabapple.” He raised her chin, peered into downcast brown eyes. “Come on.”
Nepanthe was in her forties. A lot of hard years lay behind her, yet her long raven hair showed only traces of grey. Her figure wasn’t the wisp it had been at nineteen, but neither had lumpiness conquered all. Her face did not record all the tragedies that had dogged her life. Only her eyes betrayed the melancholy caged within.
Those eyes were old, sad windows, aged by sorrow and pain the way glass is purpled by the endless assault of the sun. They said they would never sparkle again. They would believe in no good fortune, for luck and happiness were but pitfalls and taunts cast in one’s face by a malign fate. She had lost her zest for life. She was marking time, waiting for the big sleep, and knew it would be an age arriving. Her husband, the arch-sorcerer Varthlokkur, had learned to hold Death at bay. He was over four centuries old. “Come on,” he said in his gentle, coaxing voice. “What is it?”
“Varth... I just don’t like this place. It brings back so much that I want to forget. I can’t help it... Vorgreberg is accursed. Nothing good ever happens here.” She met his stare. A shadow of fear brushed her face.
“I won’t stay a minute longer than I need to.”
“Bragi will keep you... “She ground her teeth on words too harsh for the situation, “why did you come?” She heard the whine in her voice and was disgusted with herself.
He accepted the question at face value. “I don’t know. We’ll find out in a few minutes. But Bragi wouldn’t have called me if it wasn’t important.”
That wing of fear stroked her face again. “Important to whom? Varth, don’t let him get you involved. He’s accursed too.” She had begged and begged her first husband, just like this, and he hadn’t listened. And so he had died, and left her alone...
Varthlokkur smiled. “I wouldn’t call him accursed. Things just happen around him.”
“I would. They’re bad things. Killing things. Varth... I don’t want the baby born here. I lost two brothers, a husband, and my son here. I couldn’t stand it if... “
His thin fingers teased through her hair. She stared at the floor. His arms slid around her and he held her a moment. “There’ll be no more of that. No more pain. I promise.” And, “We won’t stay long. Come on. Buck up. You’ll get to see a lot of old friends.”
“All right.” She tried to smile. It felt like a death grimace tearing at her face. “I’ll be brave.” I’m good at being brave, she thought. I’ve spent my whole life bravely bearing up. Then she snorted. I’m also a little long on self-pity.
Varthlokkur drew ahead again. She watched him walk. His tall, lean frame was more rigidly erect than usual. His shoulders did not dip or bob but glided in a constant, unyielding relationship to the floor. He was all tensed up. Something was gnawing him too. King Bragi’s summons worried him more than he would admit.
Gods! Don’t let this be the start of another of those horrible things that devour everything I love. He’s all I have left.
What could it be? Shinsan again? The peace had lasted three years now. The Great Eastern Wars seemed to be over. The Dread Empire appeared to be appeased. The memories began yammering in the shadowed reaches of her mind, besieging her in earnest. She battled them till tears came. The recollections would not be driven back into their tombs. Too many dear ones had gone into the darkness before her. Too many memorial ghosts haunted her. She had nothing left. Nothing but this man, whom she could not wholly love or trust. This man and the life developing within her.
Her own life she held of little consequence. A wasteland lay behind her. The future looked as barren. She would live for the child, as she had lived for her son before.
Varthlokkur paused a few steps short of a smartly uniformed Palace Guard. Impatience peeped through his customarily neutral expression. He sensed the past rising inside her. He always knew, and always belittled her preoccupation.
She screwed up her courage and asked the question that irritated him most. “Varth, are you sure that Ethrian is gone? Isn’t there any chance at all? I just don’t feel like he’s dead.” Someday his answer might satisfy her.
His jaw tightened. He glanced at the Guard, controlled himself. “No, dear, I don’t think so. I would’ve found him by now.” He whirled, stamped to the door the Guard protected. The soldier snapped it open, clicked his heels as the wizard passed. He nodded amiably to Nepanthe.
She responded with a distracted nod. Was he someone she should remember? But she had known so many soldiers. How could she recall just one?
And then she was inside, bumping against the faces of her past like a swimmer bumping about in cold water crowded with chunks of ice. She did not know which way to dodge, which memory she most wanted to evade.
Two men in their late twenties were nearest her, their heads together as if their conversation portended conspiracy. Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice were their names. Once they had trailed her across half a continent in a noble, vain attempt to free her from the minions of the Dread Empire. Such quixotic youths they had been. “Aral. Michael. How lovely to see you again.” The romance had fled the two, she saw. They were starry-eyed boys no longer. They had the hard eyes of men who had seen too much. The war changed us all, Nepanthe thought.
Dantice was short, wide, dark of hair. He looked as though he belonged behind a pitchfork in a stable. He responded with a delighted smile and effusive greeting.
His companion was taller, slimmer, bone-pale, and more reserved. His eyes were cold and remote. Rumor said he had become Kavelin’s chief spy. Nepanthe’s brother Valther had held that post till his death at the battle of Palmisano. She searched Michael’s face.
She saw not one spark of humor there. The man was all business these days, all self-confidence, competence, and lack of acquaintance with fear. Exactly the kind of man Bragi would choose...
“Darling, you look marvelous!” A woman surrounded her in a swarm of arms. “A little peaked, maybe, but pregnancy becomes you.”
Nepanthe returned the hug absently. “You’re looking well yourself, Mist.” Mist, who had been her brother’s wife, a sorceress he had lured forth from the east and
converted to the western cause.
“Pooh! I’m an old hag.”
Aral Dantice chuckled. “The ladies I know should be so ugly.”
And Varthlokkur, with an arm around Trebilcock’s shoulder, snorted. “You’ve added false modesty to your sins, Princess?”
Mist stepped back. “Plain Chatelaine now, I’m afraid. The King sent me to fortress Maisak. You see what I’m worth when there’s no fighting?”
“It is the most important castle in the kingdom.”
Nepanthe stared at this woman whom her brother had worshipped, who had borne his children, who had been ruler of the Dread Empire before Valther entered her life. She never seemed quite real. More a fairy tale princess than one of the age’s most savage and powerful wielders of magic.
Aral put Nepanthe’s thoughts into words by observing, “She hasn’t changed a bit. Still the most beautiful and dangerous woman alive.”
Mist blushed.
How did she manage that? Nepanthe wondered. Aral had said nothing but the truth. Mist knew that. And she was no simpering little courtesan. She was centuries old, honed sharp and tempered hard by the intrigue and struggle for survival round the pinnacles of Dread Empire power. Her blush had to be contrived.
“How are your children?” Nepanthe asked.
“Growing up too fast. Every time I see them they’re two inches taller. I’ll tell them you’re here. They’ll be excited. You were always their favorite.”
A gloomy, quiet man chewing the stem of an empty pipe shook Varthlokkur’s hand. He greeted Nepanthe with a nod and a mumbled, “Nice to see you again.”
“Hello, Cham. Business any better?”
Cham Mundwiller, commercial magnate, was a longtime supporter of the King. “Not really. There’s only so much I can do while the Gap is closed.” He wandered away, became engrossed in the coats of arms gracing the far wall.
Nepanthe turned to a younger man in military dress. “Gjerdrum. How are you? You look glum.”
Aral said, “He’s sore as a hornet’s sting. His knighthood and appointment as commander of the army have gone to his head.”