Debt of Ages (13 page)

"Tonight," Tylar said, "all that is going to start to change."

"Right," Sarnac said decisively. "So let's get down to the practicalities of how we're going to change it. I gather we have to get the Restorer alone. That's surely going to take some doing in itself."

"Quite. The Augustus follows a rigidly prescribed daily round of ritual and ceremony designed to emphasize his remoteness from ordinary mortals and surround him with a semi-divine aura that, hopefully, discourages would-be assassins and usurpers. And he's
never
alone . . . except when he sleeps. That's why we're going in at night."

"Which leads to the question of how we're going to get into the Sacred Palace. I mean, that place must be guarded like you wouldn't believe. And you've made it clear that we can't simply use your technology to reduce any local opposition to a grease spot."

"Ventidius," Tylar yielded the floor to Koreel.

"Through my business contacts, I managed to get myself admitted to one of the Restorer's semi-public audiences. Once inside the palace, I proceeded inward toward the imperial apartments."

"Just like that?" Sarnac didn't even try to keep incredulity out of his voice.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to infiltrate a place if you don't need to be concerned with getting out afterwards," Koreel smiled. "Admittedly, it also helped that I was wearing a field-generator that bends incoming light one hundred and eighty degrees around itself, thus conferring invisibility. I got as close to the imperial apartments as possible, emplaced the portal device I was carrying, and used it to return to this house. The guards were left very puzzled, of course, and security was tightened up. But it all died down after a while."

"So," Tiraena said, "you simply left this device in the palace? I can't believe no one's found it."

"This is a rather special device. After I departed, it activated an invisibility field of its own. The only way anyone in the palace would find it would be by stubbing a toe on it. And it can avoid that—it has a limited self-motive capability, and it's sentient. You will be wearing similar invisibility devices tonight."

"And," Sarnac drawled, "hopefully we're also sentient."

* * *

Unseen in an alcove in a deserted corridor, the immaterial doorway opened and two segments of reality came into dimensional congruency. Sarnac emerged, stepping from Koreel's house into the heart of the Sacred Palace. He looked around, trying to see as much as possible of the fabled magnificence of which the pillaging Crusaders and Turks of his history would leave not a trace. But he could only see it in blurry shades of gray—his magic cloak of invisibility had a little drawback Tylar had neglected to mention until the last minute. (The time traveller had blandly expressed surprise at his lack of gratitude for the compensating effect that enabled him to see at all from within the field.) And, of course, he couldn't see other wearers of the field-generators at all.

All of which meant that they were going to have to do without the gizmo as much as possible.

The portal vanished, and Tylar winked into existence beside him. "Well, we're evidently alone in this corridor, so we can deactivate our stealth fields." Sarnac did so—his, like Tiraena's and Andreas', was manually operated—and all five of them stood revealed. The corridor was dark, but the light-gathering optics enabled them to see it in all its ornateness, stretching endlessly off to both sides. Sarnac called up his implanted infobase, and a floor plan seemed to float before his eyes. A cluster of five red dots showed their location.

"This way," Tylar commanded. They set out toward the right, keeping close to the wall, and the red dots began to move.

They hadn't gone far before Tylar motioned them to a halt. The time traveller then sidled forward to a corner and reactivated his stealth field. Sarnac heard the disturbed-beehive sound of a stunner. Then Tylar reappeared and motioned them forward. Rounding the corner, Sarnac saw two Scholarian Guards lying motionless before elaborately-carved double doors.

"This is the entrance to the imperial apartments. They're not as heavily guarded as you might think, as it's normally impossible to get this far without passing through many outer layers of security." He brought a small instrument to bear on the lock, and soon the doors swung ponderously open.

"This is too easy," Tiraena whispered as they passed through spacious outer chambers. "I mean, in a society where an assassin is the legitimate successor as long as he can prove it's 'God's will' by making it stick . . ."

"I know what you mean," Sarnac whispered in reply. "But we've got to assume Tylar knows what he's doing."

"You've
got
to be kidding!" she muttered.

Then they were at a second door. "The imperial bedchamber," Tylar announced. He brought the little instrument to bear. "This should only take a moment."

They waited—with no good grace, at least in Sarnac's case. Tiraena's words had awakened worries he hadn't let himself contemplate. He hadn't had a migraine for years—his era's medicine was up to dealing with them—but he wondered if one might be coming on, for the pseudo-light of the optics was starting to hurt his eyes, as though with an intensifying glare. . . .

The glare became blinding at the same instant as the shouts rang out, and the guards were on them.

Sarnac frantically deactivated his optics at the same time he fumbled to get out his stunner.
Yeah,
some detached part of him took a split second to think,
that's the trouble with light-gathering technology. When it's got a
lot
of light to gather—like that lantern this patrol is carrying—they can blind you. These guys must have just found the unconscious guards outside the outer door and followed us in here.

Then there was no time to do anything but react. He stopped trying to tug the stunner out and brought up his left arm to catch the downward-chopping sword. The impact jarred through his shoulder, but the material of his sleeve stiffened into a hardness exceeding that of steel at the touch of the sword-edge. His right arm brought a fist up into the stunned guard's gut.
Good thing the Scholarians don't wear body armor with their palace-service whites
, he thought within his inner storm center. But then a second guard was on top of him from behind. As he struggled in the man's grip, he caught a glimpse of the total scene. Tiraena and Andreas had managed to bring their stunners to bear and were scything down their assailants—Tiraena got the lantern-bearer, and managed to catch the thing as it fell from his limp hand. She almost stumbled over the man Sarnac had punched, and put an end to his gasping with her stunner. Artorius was on the floor, throttling the guard he was atop. Tylar was standing strangely aloof from it all . . . but his expression told Sarnac he was up to something. But then he could spare no thought for anything except fumbling with his stunner and jamming it up against the disconcertingly strong guard whose arm was around his neck.

He had just managed it and felt the weight on his back go limp, and simultaneously saw Andreas' last attacker fall stunned, when the bedchamber doors crashed open.

"What's this?" roared the man who stood there, clad in a nightgown but with a very businesslike sword in his hand. He took in the scene in a glance, then drew a breath. "Guards! To me!" he thundered. He might be old for this era—fifty-eight, Sarnac automatically calculated—but there was nothing wrong with his lungs.

Tylar faced him equably. "No one can hear you, Augustus. I have . . . well, suffice it to say that no sound can escape these chambers."

The dark eyes narrowed. "Witchcraft? Ha! Save it to frighten children, assassin! In the meantime, come and get me!" He raised his sword and fell into what Sarnac remembered as correct fighting stance.

"We mean you no harm, Augustus." The words came from across the room in the same baritone. Artorius stood up from the unconscious guard and faced the emperor of Rome.

For a time that lasted so long that Sarnac began to suspect Tylar of using some sort of temporal-distortion trick, the tableau held. Then the Restorer's sword lowered inch by inch until the point scraped the floor. Then his features firmed and the sword came up again.

"So, you plan to substitute an imposter for me, do you? Well, as plotters go you're a poor breed! You might have gotten a man old enough, and not clean-shaven!" Then his face took on a thoughtful look and he addressed Artorius. "Ah! I see. You're to pose as a long-lost son of mine, a by-blow of my youth, after I'm dead. Well, I'm not dead yet, mountebank! Come for me, or are you as gutless as you are faithless?"

Artorius stepped closer, heedless of the sword, until their faces were only a few feet apart, like mirror images save for the emperor's beard, wrinkles and uniformly-gray hair. "You don't really think that, Augustus," he said softly. "You know—oh, yes, you know!"

Again, time seemed to freeze as the two identical profiles faced each other and no one else dared break the silence that had congealed around them.

"No," the emperor finally whispered. "It can't be possible."

Artorius sighed. "What shall I tell you of, Augustus? Of the little mole on the inside of Gwenhwyvaer's left thigh? Or of your fourteenth summer, when you went riding with the men into the hills southwest of Ribchester to buy horses from the Ordovices, and at night while your father was dickering with the chieftain a roan-haired girl whose name you never learned led you off beyond the campfires and . . ."

"Stop," the Restorer croaked.

"Or shall I go further back and tell you of your childhood friend Perdius, who you later watched bleed his life out through the gash of a Saxon throwing-axe? Of the time you and Flavian . . ." Artorius stopped and swallowed hard. When he resumed, his words were like soldiers advancing to face whetted steel, first hesitantly, then in a rush. "Of the time you and Perdius—no longer really children, though you didn't understand that just yet—were wrestling, and all at once your eyes met his, and you knew he was feeling the same strange, frightening things you were, and without a word you both . . ."

"As God is my witness, that was the only time in my entire life . . . !" The Restorer's voice shuddered to a halt. For a long moment his eyes stared wildly into Artorius's. Then he smashed a fist against the door-frame. "No dream," he muttered to himself. "Am I mad, then. Or dead and in a hell of madness? Or . . . ?" He faced Artorius with a strange calm. "Can a man see his own ghost while yet living? Is that what you are—the spirit of my own younger self?"

"No, Augustus. I'm older than I look. I am not truly yourself, although . . ." He hesitated, as though realizing the inadequacy of all their planning for this moment. "I am the same man as you, but in a world which is a . . . a different thought in the mind of God."

The Restorer shook his head slowly, looking every day of his age and more. "You talk of things I can't understand, spirit. This is madness indeed, for if you speak truly then the world itself is mad and no man can say for certain that he himself is sane." He shook his head again. "I believe I'll continue to think of you as a spirit, for I own that I lack the courage to face the alternative!"

"Very well, Augustus. You may even be right; perhaps I
am
a spirit of the air to you, as you are to me. Some would explain it otherwise and speak of
quantum mechanics
and
superposition of functions
, but it's all one. For now, let it suffice that my world, and my life in it, ran the same course as yours until your forty-third year, when you waited with your army in Bourges until Syagrius of Soissons arrived with his forces and those of his Frankish allies, and together you smashed King Euric's Visigoths."

"Ah, yes!" The Restorer's eyes gleamed with memory. "Syagrius! He was a faithful ally! His death before Bourges almost made the victory too costly."

Even though with his dying breath he made you his heir to the Kingdom of Soissons, and your power base was secure,
Sarnac thought with his implanted knowledge.
Now, now, let's not be cynical. Maybe he really was sorry to see Syagrius go. Who am I to say otherwise?
But then Artorius was speaking again.

"Know, Augustus, that in my reality I advanced from Bourges and placed my own army in a forward position in Berry, not knowing that our plans had been betrayed to Euric by Arvandus, former Prefect of Gaul. At a place called Bourg-de-Déols the Visigoths came against us in overwhelming force. We gave better than we got in the course of a long afternoon's slaughter, but in the end the army of Britain was routed and I was mortally wounded. Six years later, that Odoacer who you defeated in your world deposed the last Western emperor, and Europe descended into chaos."

The Restorer's eyes grew round. "Again, spirit, you speak madness! If you were mortally wounded fifteen years ago in this spirit-world of yours, how come you to stand here now looking, I'll swear, no older than I did then?"

"I was saved from death, and later from the ravages of time, through the mercy of God." (Sarnac searched Tylar's face in vain for any trace of embarrassment.) "But I was . . . called away from the affairs of my world after that. There are others here who can attest to what happened in those days in my past." He motioned Tylar and Sarnac forward. The Restorer's eyes widened still further.

"Tertullian! I remember you—Sidonius's secretary. And Bedwyr! of course I remember you. You saved my life in a Saxon ambush just before the Battle of Angers, where you did good service." He looked bewildered. "Tertullian, you look the same as you did then, like . . ." He waved vaguely in Artorius's direction. Then he smiled at Sarnac. "At least you, Bedwyr, look somewhat older now, as is proper!"
You could have gone all night without saying that, Your Imperial Majesty,
Sarnac thought sourly.

"Augustus," Tylar interjected, "do you recall what made you decide to stay in Bourges, that spring of 470, and wait for the reinforcements from Soissons?"

The Restorer looked blank for a heartbeat, then blinked. "Of course! I hadn't thought of it in years, but seeing Bedwyr reminded me. Yes, a few words I had with him as we were preparing to advance into Berry. He didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know—his words just crystallized certain doubts I had had all along." Suddenly, his eyes widened and he rounded on Artorius. "Are you telling me, spirit, that those few words made the difference between the real world and this nightmare spirit world of yours? That the merest instant of wavering on my part separated the empire from oblivion . . . ?" He came abruptly to a halt, silenced by what he had seen on Artorius' face. For he, and he alone, knew with a knowledge beyond the need for thought what the expressions of that face meant.