[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"No. Where do you stand?"
"I always stand opposite Greyfells. And this time, behind your friend. This
isn't to leave this room. The Ministry has been making available certain aid.
Funds for which we aren't accountable, and weapons. This may have to stop. But
I'll remain behind your friend. His success would delay war, maybe prevent
it..."
The Minister's secretary appeared. "Your Lordship, there's a gentleman who
insists on seeing this gentleman." His nose wrinkled. Ragnarson glanced down
to see if he had forgotten to shake the horse manure off his boots.
Blackfang rolled in. "Bragi, one of my lads says they raided your place again.
My people caught them. Got most of them. What you want to do?"
For a long time Ragnarson said nothing. Guards came to drag Blackfang away,
but the Minister shooed them off. Finally, Bragi said, "I'll let you know in a
minute. Wait outside." After Blackfang and the secretary departed, he asked,
"What would happen if Greyfells were assassinated?"
The Minister frowned thoughtfully behind steepled fingers. "They'd want heads.
Yours if they connected you. His son would take his place."
"If both were to go?"
"He has four sons. Peas from a pod. Chips from the block. But it'd buy a few
months. And get the kingdomturned upside down. How many people at your place?
Better think about them." "I am."
"Something could be arranged... If I could get them to safety?..."
"You'd have a corpse. I hate to lose the place, but it looks like I'm damned
no matter what."
"Keeping it could be fixed. Yourgrant runs to the river. That puts it in a
Page 39
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
military zone. I could take it over till this blows away. I'll have to put
troops in anyway, if you and your eastern friend leave a forty-mile gap
unpatrolled. If I don't, I'll have the north woods thick with bandits from
Prost Kamenets, and trade with Iwa Skolovda cut off. But getting you, and your
eastern friend, off the hook would take some doing. You might have to stay
away for years."
"I think," said Ragnarson, "I'll have to do that anyway. To get help reaching
Greyfells." He was on the edge of decision. He knew where to buy the knife,
but the price would be playing Haroun's game in Kavelin.
"We'll meet tomorrow, then. Where're you staying?" "King's Cross, but I may
move. We had some trouble in New Haymarket. Greyfells might try to have us
arrested."
"Uhm. Charge would only have to stick till something regretable happened in
the dungeons. He's foxy. All right. Wansettle Newkirk, ten in the morning. You
know it?"
"I can find it."
"Good luck then."
Ragnarson rose, shook the Minister's hand, joined Blackfang. He remained
uncommunicative the rest of the day.
FIVE: Their Wickedness Spans the Earth
i) But the evil know no joy
At last. The end of a long and tiring journey. Burla glanced back to see if he
had been overtaken at the penultimate moment, sighed, slipped into the cave.
His friend Shoptaw, the winged man, greeted him with anxious questions. "Fine,
now," Burla replied with a wide, fangy grin. "But tired. Master?"
"Come," the winged man said.
The old man was solicitous and apologetic. "I'm sorry you had to go through
this. But Burla, you did me proud. Proud. How's the child?"
Swelling in the Master's praise, Burla replied, "Good, Master. But hungry.
Sad."
"Yes, so. You weren't prepared to bring him so far. I feared..."
Burla laid the baby before the Master. The old man opened its wrappings.
"What's this? A girl?" Thunderheads rumbled across his brow. "Burla..."
"Master?" Had he done wrong without knowing?
The old man held his temper. Whatever had happened, it had not been Burla's
fault. The dwarf didn't have thebrains. "But how?..." he asked aloud,
wondering how a counterswitch had been made. Then he looked closer. The
hereditary mark was there.
The King had lied. To support his shaky throne he had announced the birth of a
son when a daughter had been born. The fool! There was no way he could have
pulled it off...
Page 40
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Realization. His own schemes had been dealt a savage blow. A wildcat was
growling in his embrace. Willy-nilly, he had inherited the Krief's plot. "Oh,
damn, damn..."
Two days passed before he trusted his temper enough to confront his shadowy
ally. The failure was the easterner's fault. He should have used spells to
assure the sex of the child. The old man would have done it himself had he
suspected the other's sloppiness.
But no one accused the Demon Prince of incompe-tence. No sorcerer was more
powerful or touchy than Yo Hsi, nor had any had more time to perfect his
wickedness. He was an evil spanning unknown centuries. Only one man dared
openly challenge the Demon Prince, his co-ruler and arch-enemy in Shinsan, the
Dragon Prince, Nu Li Hsi. And, perhaps, the Star Rider, the old man thought,
but he was irrelevant to the equation.
The old man, who had taken great pains to remain anonymous, was a noble of
Kavelin, the Captal of Savernake, hereditary guardian of the Savernake Gap.
His castle, Maisak, in the highest and narrowest part of the pass, had seen
countless battles fought beneath its walls. Only once had it been threatened,
when El Murid's hordes, by sheer numbers, had almost swamped it. The Wesson,
Eanred Tarlson, had prevented that. That near-defeat had led the Captal to
reinforce his defenses with sorcery.
A greater sorcery was in the Savernake Gap now. That of Shinsan. The Demon
Prince's interlocutors had come to the Captal and found a bitter, ambitious
man, Ravelin's only non-Nordmen noble gone sour over the treatment he received
in Vorgreberg. The emissaries had tempted him with the Crown of Kavelin in
exchange for service to Yo Hsi and eventual passage west for Shinsan's
legions. Yo Hsi was ready to settle his ancient strugglewith the Dragon
Prince. A united Shinsan would move swiftly to fulfill its age-old goal of
world dominion.
The Captal, from his lonely aerie, had seen little of the world but that
contained in the caravans flowing past Maisak. Since the fall of Ilkazar, the
west had been weak and divided. The major powers, Itaskia and El Murid's
religious state, were deadly enemies evenly matched. Neither showed much
interest in using sorcery for military purposes.
Shinsan hinged its strategies on sorcery. Physical combat was a followup, to
occupy, to achieve tactical goals. Rumor whispered dreadful things of the
powers pent there, awaiting unity to release them.
The Captal had chosen what he thought would be the winning side. Western
sorcery and soldiery had no hope against the Dread Empire.
Yo Hsi had established a transfer link between Maisak and a border castle in
his sector of Shinsan. Th old man now used it. He bore the child in his arms.
The place he went was dark and misty. There were hints of evils out of sight,
evils more grim than any he had created in the caverns in the cliffs against
which Maisak stood.
A squad of soldiers, statue-like in black armor, surrounded his entry point.
He could see nothing beyond them. He, and they, might have been the entire
universe.
Was Yo Hsi expecting trouble? He had never been greeted this way before. "I
want to see the Demon Prince. I'm the Captal of Savernake..."
Page 41
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Not a weapon wavered, not a man moved. Their discipline was frightening.
From the darkness, a darker darkness still, Yo Hsi materialized. Fear cramped
the Captal's guts. The man hadn't been the same since losing his hand-though,
perhaps, the change had begun earlier, with the failure in the child's sex.
Consistency of oversight suggested that Yo Hsi was developing a godlike
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]