Upland Outlaws (4 page)

“That was why you came to the Rotunda today?”

Thunder rumbled in the ambience. “Of course it was! Why are you so stupid? We expected him to strike when we answered your summons at the enthronement, so he could swat all four of us at the same time. Probably he’d have blasted us as he blasted Ag-an, years ago. Grunth and I got the jump on him. We made you imperor, sonny, but it isn’t going to do you any good. “

Shandie frowned. “And why destroy the thrones? Zinixo did that?”

“No! I did!”

“The four thrones were occult,” Rap said. This conversation was a stupid waste of time! Nevertheless, the imperor had a right to know, and Rap himself had no idea what was going to happen next. If Zinixo’s Covin had already infested the city, then the situation was as close to hopeless as he could imagine. “They were portals into the wardens’ palaces. He could have forced entry through them.”

“I thought you didn’t know all this?” the imperor said.

“I didn’t, earlier. Partly I’m working it out as I go along, from what Raspnex told me as he came in-you weren’t privy to that conversation, is all. He hasn’t used sorcery on me yet, although he could. And you’ll have to take our word on that. You can’t trust anyone now, your Majesty. Once Zinixo’s votaries pin a man down, he’s theirs. As Raspnex says, Legate Ugoatho would be a logical first choice. He’ll serve Zinixo from now on, to the death. They all will.”

“To what purpose?” Shandie demanded grimly.

Rap shrugged. “He’s mad, he sees danger everywhere. The imperor is powerful, so he must be loyal to Zinixo-everyone must, who has any sort of power at all. He’d make everyone in the world love him, if he could. “

“Where are the Four?”

Rap looked to Raspnex. “Good question!”

“Gone,” the dwarf said. “Most of their votaries have been stolen from them. Lith’rian panicked first and fled to IIrane. Olybino was next. He’s just vanished. Can you imagine what Zinixo will do to those two when he gets his hands on them? No, you can’t possibly imagine. Even I can’t. But it will be long and nasty-that I do know. ” He pulled a face. “And I’m not on his friendship list either. “

“And Grunth?”

The dwarf shrugged, rolling his eyes.

“So Zinixo will imprint me with a loyalty spell?” Shandie demanded, glaring.

“Slow, isn’t he?” the warlock said, in an aside to Rap. “Of course. It will be easier than proclaiming himself imperor. The Impire is just too big for him to ensorcel everyone, and a dwarf imperor would not be acceptable-he would always be frightened of revolution, see? But you will reign for his benefit. You will serve him loyally to the end of your days.” He jabbed a finger like a crowbar toward the child asleep in Eshiala’s lap. “And so will she, and her children after her! You know how long sorcerers live.”

“No!” Shandie bellowed. “I won’t have it!”

The dwarf curled his big mouth into a sardonic smile. “And your so-beautiful wife? My nephew is oddly partial to female imps … Now don’t you wish you’d taken my advice?”

Shandie put an arm around Eshiala. “What is your advice now?”

Again the dwarf shrugged his barrel shoulders. “I may be able to get us out of here. May, I said. He’s so suspicious that he tends to be too cautious. He may not commit his real strength quickly enough to block me. “

That sounded like a very leaky lifeboat to Rap. As soon as the fugitives emerged from the shielding, they would be visible in the ambience. There was no hiding place in that featureless void, no way to outrun a superior force. Only power mattered.

“If I can escape …” Shandie said. “If we can … If you can get us out of here, what then?”

“Retire. Hide. You can’t hope to win your impire back, you know. Just go into hiding and maybe, in a couple of centuries, your descendants can come forward and claim their inheritance.” The mundanes stared at one another in dismay, while Raspnex curled his lip contemptuously at them; but in the ambience he was scowling up at Rap with a worried expression. “The kid’s taking a long time, isn’t he?”

“Let’s hope he’s still yours when he comes back, ” Rap said pointedly. “Zinixo’s here, in Hub?” he added aloud. “Maybe. More likely not, not yet. But he’s sent his minions. I could smell ‘em.”

“So could I. And I’m not exactly his best friend, either, am I?”

Raspnex chortled, a noise of ice floes in a polar storm. “Not much, you’re not! You and your kingdom. Your wife and children. I bet the little turd has dreamed of you every night for twenty years, your Majesty!”

“Why did none of you warn me?” Rap said angrily.

“Because we thought you knew! Because we thought you were laying low-and because we thought you could handle the matter when you got around to it!”

“You mean you were all relying on me? Waiting on me to do something? Fools! ” Rap had always assumed that the Four knew how he had lost his paramount power years ago. Probably such an absurdity had never occurred to them, and they had been frightened to spy on a demigod. Fortunately Zinixo must have made the same error.

“That’s obvious now, but we didn’t know that, did we?” the dwarf snarled.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t come after me already.”

“He didn’t know, either! But it won’t be long now. And he couldn’t try to settle with you earlier without alerting the wardens. ” The warlock’s sneer was almost an offer of sympathy by dwarvish standards.

Rap thought of the battles in which he had defeated Zinixothe brutal one-on-one struggle when the dwarf had attacked him in the Rotunda, and then the greater battle when Rap had singlehandedly stormed the Red Palace, an avenging demigod blasting aside guards and defenses in fiery cataclysms, rending walls in pursuit of his fleeing prey. Zinixo would have forgotten none of that, especially his own screams for mercy at the end.

He thought also of Krasnegar, and Inos, and the children, hopelessly vulnerable. Gods!

“Suppose he does seize the throne,” Sagorn asked hoarsely,

“the Imperial throne, I mean, not Krasnegar-either in his own name or through a puppet-then what? “

“He will wipe out any threat, any threat at all. Any hint of disloyalty, any loose talk.” Raspnex threw contempt at the old jotunn, but Sagom had already analyzed the logic to its absurd conclusions.

“But it will be his Impire then, won’t it? So any threat to the Impire will be a threat to the Living God? The caliph, for example. “

Surprised, the dwarf nodded. “Exactly. The caliph is a threat to the Impire, so the caliph will have to go. The goblins are about ready to launch their big attack-Zinixo will smash them. Of course he’ll go after Lith’rian and the elves first.”

Sagorn snapped his teeth shut with a click. “He will rule the world,” he muttered.

“In a year or two, yes.”

“Is there nothing we can do to prevent this obscenity?” Count Ionfeu said. Old and frail he might be, but generations of imperial pride showed on his weathered features. Thousands of men like him had built the Impire, and he would sooner die than let it all fall into the hands of a dwarf.

Silence fell.

Was there nothing to be done?

“Surely he can’t have cornered every word of power in Pandemia? ” Rap asked Raspnex privately.

“Near enough. He has people out hunting down every sorcerer-Evil!-every adept and genius, even. If you go looking for allies, you can’t expect to collect them faster than his Covin can.”

There was the awful truth, then! “Faerie’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s where I made my great mistake? “

Raspnex’s shadow image bared its teeth. “That’s it!”

The mundanes were all waiting for an answer to the count’s question. Was there an answer?

Rap said, “There might be. It’s an Evilish long shot, but we could try, if Zinixo hasn’t beaten us to it.”

“Dross!” the dwarf snarled, disbelieving.

“There’s a lot of magic lying around in the Nogids!” Raspnex gasped aloud. “You’ll get yourself eaten if you try that! “

“I’d rather have my flesh eaten than my mind, I think,” Rap said. “And it was all my fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Why was it?” the impress asked. All through the discussions, she had been sitting as still as a statue, holding her sleeping child. Why was her face so familiar? “What did you do, your Majesty?”

“I cut off the supply of magic. I can’t tell you all the details now, but I went back to Faerie-” A stab of pain reminded him that sorcery did not like to be discussed. “Never mind. I did it, and it’s done.” Each word of power represented a dead fairy, but almost no one except the wardens had ever known that simple fact. It was the ultimate secret behind the workings of sorcery, and the Protocol.

Faerie … Raspnex projected a whiff of nostalgia and a fleeting image of the riotous party in Milflor when Zinixo’s votaries had celebrated their release. They hadn’t noticed Rap arrive on the island, or what he was up to-not that they could have stopped him, anyway. By the time he had joined in the festivities, the fairies had vanished, from jail and jungle both. He had stamped out forever that ghastly farming of people, or so he hoped.

“And you can’t undo it now, can you?” the dwarf said angrily. “Your stupid, blundering good intentions! Where did you put the fairies?”

“I can’t even tell you. And no, I can’t ever undo it. I used every scrap of power I possessed.” Power he possessed no longer! “It’s done now. Forever. Unless the Gods take pity on us.”

He turned away from all the shocked faces. Good intentions? Only now did he see that the fairies’ suffering throughout the ages had at least helped to stabilize life for everyone else, by buttressing the Protocol. The arrangement had been grossly unfair, but it had held some good as well as much evil. By ending it, he had upset the balance of the world.

The one time he had tried to be a God, and he had blundered! “I don’t understand!” Acopulo bleated.

“He cut off the supply of magic!” Raspnex growled. “The Protocol was set up, to prevent exactly this sort of happening! The supply of magic was the prerogative of the warlock of the west. If any one sorcerer ever tried to build a sorcerous army and make himself paramount, West could create an opposing army! As a last resort. That’s why it’s never been done before, although Ulien’ came close in the War of the Five Warlocks.” He scowled, as if in pain.

Sagom made a choking noise. “A safety net!”

“And your faunish friend cut it down!” Ulien’? Again Rap felt a nudge of premonition.

Zinixo was the disaster at the end of the third millennium, but there had been trouble at the end of the first and the second, also, and it had been overcome both times. A thousand years since Thume had become the Accursed Land, since the whole race of pixies had vanished, and now …

“The imperor met a pixie!” he told Raspnex excitedly. “Ulien’, you said? War of Five Warlocks? Thume! There’s another hope, then! The War of the Five Warlocks? Maybe there is an answer-in Thume!”

“You’re crazy!” Raspnex mumbled, staring. “Maybe! But craziness is all we’ve got left, isn’t it?”

The door downstairs opened briefly, and young Grimrix shot through it like a rabbit. Even before it had slammed shut again, he had translated himself back upstairs. He was flushed, and panting, and so excited that he shouted aloud. Rap and Raspnex both stiffened defensively, but he did not notice-and he did not seem to have been warped from his loyalty.

“They’re here, sir! Hussars, all around the house. All three streets.” Images of several hundred soldiers and their mounts …

“Any occults?” Raspnex demanded.

“Didn’t stay around to look, but if you’ll let me go down there again and thump ass, I can find out!” He was twitching with battle lust. Drums and trumpets …

“Can’t we leave the same way as Master Jalon did?” Signifer Ylo inquired in a shaky voice.

“Quite impossible! ” Sagorn snapped, and Rap resisted a desire to laugh.

“You seem very certain of that,” Hardgraa growled.

This was no time to start explaining the workings of a sequential spell. “He’s right, though! ” Rap said. “And wed leave tracks in this snow, wouldn’t we? Raspnex, got any ideas?”

“I can try. I’ll try to move us all to my palace.”

“But the house is shielded.”

The warlock leered. “It won’t be in a minute. Grimmy, can you lift this shield by yourself?”

The ambience shimmered as young Grimrix flexed his power. His very-solid image spat on its hands, and he grinned. “Easy, sir!”

“Don’t be too sure-some of these old spells have been renewed a lot of times. Watch out for underlying layers. When I push, rip it. Then slam it back fast! You’ve got to stay and cover for us. “

The young votary paled, shocked. “But if they catch me-” The ambience rang with grief louder than the bells of the city. “Then you’ll be just as happy serving him as you are serving me,” Raspnex said. “Hold them off as long as you can. Don’t try to follow me, understand?”

“Not even-“

“Not at all! You arguing?”

“Of course not!”

“Good … Listen!” One of the back doors shuddered noisily.

“Axes!” Rap said. “They’re trying the courtyard door. That one’s a poor choice. It’s got some occult tricks to it.”

“Nevertheless, the time to go has arrived,” Raspnex growled. “Getup, woman!”

“This’ll never work!” Rap said. “Soon as the kid opens a window, they’ll fry us!”

“They want us alive you especially!”

Being fried might be the better alternative, Rap thought. Quite apart from a lingering revenge on his person, Zinixo would want to interrogate him on the whereabouts of the fairies.

The mundanes were all on their feet, the imperor holding the still-sleeping child.

“This may be rough,” the warlock told them. “But I’ve got some friends standing by to shield us as soon as we arrive-I hope. If the enemy got there first, then … well, it’s worth a try.”

“Wait!” Shandie said. “What happens after?”

“I told you. You go into hiding, and stay there.”

“No!” The imperor set his jaw stubbornly. “Maybe my realm has been stolen from me, but I will not have my mind stolen, also! I will not give up. I will fight!”

Good for him, Rap thought.

A fusillade of blows rocked the courtyard door. Now the other doors were under attack, also, and that meant a sorcerer had identified them for the legionaries.