Dread Empire - All Darkness Met Part 43

And d.a.m.ned worried. He had counted on using the Power to conceal himself in enemy territory. But there was no Power anymore. He had to slip around like a common thief.

His journey was taking longer than he had expected. The legions were active in the pa.s.s. He had to spend most of his time hiding.

When the Power had gone, he had learned, turmoil had broken loose in Shinsan, rocking the domains of several despotic Tervola. Peasants had rebelled. Shopkeepers and artisans had lynched mask-wearers. But the insurrections were localized and ineffectual.

The Tervola owned swift and merciless legions. And, in most places, the ancient tyranny wasn't intolerable.

Haroun made use of the confusion.

He traveled east without dawdling, yet days became weeks, and weeks, months. He hadn't realized the vastness of Shinsan. He grew depressed when he reflected on the strength pent there, with its timeless tradition of manifest destiny. Nothing would stop these people if O Shing excited them, pointed them, unleashed them...O Shing, it seemed, had hidden himself so far to the east that Haroun feared that he would reach the place where the sun rose first. Autumn became winter. Once more he trudged across snowy fields, his cloak pulled tight about him.

His horse had perished on the Sendelin Steppe. He hadn't replaced it. Stealing anything, he felt, would be tempting Fate too much.

He had entered Lao-Pa Sing thinking the journey would last a few hundred miles at most.

His thinking had been shaped by a life in the west, where many states were smaller than Kavelin. Shinsan, though, spanned not tens and hundreds, but thousands of miles.

Through each he had to march unseen.

In time he reached Liaontung. There, based on the little he understood of Shinsan's primary dialect, he should find O Shing. And where he found O Shing he should find Mocker.

In happier circ.u.mstances he might have enjoyed his visit. Liaontung was a quaint old city, like none he had seen before. Its architecture was uniquely eastern Shinsan.

Its society was less structured than at the heart of the empire. A legacy of border life? Or because Wu was less devoted to absolute rule than most Tervola? Haroun understood that Wu and O Shing were relatively popular.

O Shing's reputation didn't fit Haroun's preconceptions. The emperor and his intimates, Lang and Tran, seemed well-known and accessible. The commons could, without fear, argue grievances with them.

Yet O Shing was O Shing, demi-G.o.d master of the Dread Empire. He had been shaped by all who had gone before him. His role was subject to little personal interpretation.

He had to pursue Shinsan's traditional destinies.

He was about to move. Liaontung crawled with Tervola and their staffs. Spring would see Shinsan's full might in motion for the first time since Mist had flung it at Escalon.

The holocaust was at hand. Only the direction of the blow remained in doubt.

O Shing favored Matayanga. Though he realized the west was weak, he resisted the arguments of the Tervola. Baxendala had made a deep impression, Haroun hid in a wood near the city, pondering. Why did O Shing vacillate? Every day wasted strengthened his enemies.

He scouted Liaontung well before going in. Hunger finally moved him.

His eagerness for the kill had faded.

He hadn't heard one mention of Mocker yet.

He went in at night, using rope and grapnel to scale a wall between patrols. Once in the streets he took it slow, hanging in shadows. Had it been possible, he would have traveled by the rooftops. But the buildings had steeply pitched tile roofs patched with snow and ice. Stalact.i.tes of ice hung from their ornate corners.

"Getting d.a.m.ned tired of being cold," he muttered.

The main streets remained busy despite the hour. Every structure of substance seemed to have its resident Tervola. Aides rushed hither and yon.

"It's this spring," he mumbled. "And Bragi won't be ready."He stalked the citadel, thoughts circling his son and wife obsessively. His chances of seeing them again were plummeting with every step.

Yet if he failed tonight, they would be trapped in a world owned by O Shing.

It didn't occur to him that he could fail. Haroun bin Yousif never failed. Not at murder. He was too skilled, too practiced.

Faces paraded across his mind, of men he thought forgotten. Most had died by his hand. A few had perished at his direction. Beloul and El Senoussi had daggers as b.l.o.o.d.y as his own. The secret war with El Murid had been long and b.l.o.o.d.y. He wasn't proud of everything he had done. From the perspective of the doorstep of a greater foe the Disciple didn't look bad. Nor did his own motives make as much sense. From today the past twenty years looked more a process of habit than of belief.

What course had Megelin charted? Rumors said there was heavy fighting at home.

But that news had come through the filter of a confused war between Argon and Necremnos which had engulfed the entire Roe basin, inundating dozens of lesser cities and princ.i.p.alities.

Argon, rumor said, had been about to collapse when a general named Badalamen had appeared and gradually brought the Necremnens to ruin.

Haroun wondered if O Shing might not be behind that war. It was convenient for Shinsan, and he had heard that a Tervola had been seen in Argon..

He could be sure of nothing. He couldn't handle the language well.

Liaontung's citadel stood atop a basaltic upthrust. It was a ma.s.sive structure.

Its thirty-foot walls were of whitewashed brick. Faded murals and strange symbols, in places, had been painted over the whitewash.

The whole thing, Haroun saw after climbing seventy feet of basalt, was roofed.

From a distance he had thought that a trick of perspective.

"d.a.m.n!" How would he get in? The gate was impossible. The stair to it was clogged with traffic.

The wall couldn't be climbed. After a dozen failures with his grapnel he concluded that the rope trick was impossible too. He circled the base of the fortress. There was just the one entrance.

Cursing softly, he clung to shadow and listened to the sentries. He retreated only when certain he could p.r.o.nounce the pa.s.swords properly.

It was try the main entrance or go home.

He waited in the darkness behind the mouth of a narrow street. In time a lone Tervola, his size, pa.s.sed.

One brief, startled gasp fled the man as Haroun's knife drove home. Bin Yousif dragged him into the shadows, quickly appropriated his clothing and mask He paid no heed to the mask. He didn't know enough to distinguish Tervola by that means.

The mask resembled a locust.

In complete ignorance he had struck a blow more devastating than that he had come to deliver.Haroun hadn't known that Wu existed. Nor would he have cared if he had. One Shinsaner was like another. He would shed no tears if every man, woman, and child of them fell beneath the knives of their enemies.

Haroun was a hard, cruel man. He wept for his enemies only after they were safely in the ground.

He mounted the steps certain something would go awry. He tried to mimic the Tervola's walk, his habit of moving his right hand like a restless cobra. He rehea.r.s.ed that pa.s.sword continuously.

And was stunned when the sentries pressed their foreheads to the pavement, murmuring what sounded like incantations.

His fortune only made him more nervous. What should his response have been?

But he was inside. And everyone he encountered repeated the performance. He remained unresponsive. No one remarked on his behavior, odd or not.

"Must have killed somebody important," he mumbled. Good. Though it could have its disadvantages. Sooner or later someone would approach him with a pet.i.tion, request for orders, or....

He ducked into an empty room when he spied another Tervola. He dared not try dealing with an equal.

His luck persisted. It was late. The crowds had declined dramatically.

He stumbled across his quarry by accident.

He had entered an area devoted to apartments. He encountered one with its door ajar and soft voices coming through....

A footfall warned him. He turned as a sentry entered the pa.s.sage, armed with a crossbow. For a moment the soldier stared uncertainly.

Haroun realized he had made some mistake. The crossbow rose.

He snapped the throwing knife underhand. Its blade sank into the soldier's throat.

The crossbow discharged. The bolt nipped Haroun's sleeve, clattered down the hallway.

"d.a.m.n!" He made sure of the man, appropriated his weapon, hurried back to the open door.

To him the action had seemed uproarious. But there was no excitement behind the door.

He peeped in. The speakers were out of sight. He slipped inside, peeped through a curtain. He didn't recognize the three men, nor could he follow a tenth of their argument. But he lingered in hopes he could learn the whereabouts of his target, or Mocker.

O Shing told Lang and Tran, "I'm convinced, Tran. There's too much smoke for there not to be fire. Chin's it. And Wu must be in it. You identify anyone else, Tran?"

"Feng and Kwan, Lord." He used the Lord of Lords t.i.tle.

Haroun stepped in.

"Wu!" the three gasped.

Haroun was the perfect professional. His bolt slew Lang before his gasp ended. He finished Tran a second later, with the knife he had thrown before.O Shing hobbled around a bed, pulled a cord.

Haroun cursed softly.

"You.... You're not Wu."

Haroun discarded the locust mask. The cruel little smile tugged his lips as he cranked the crossbow.

"You!" O Shing gasped. He remembered who had harried him through the Savernake Gap. "How did you...?"

"I am the Brother of Death," Haroun replied. "Her blind brother. Justice."

Running feet slapped stone floors.

Haroun fired. The bolt slammed into O Shing's heart.

The dark man drew his sword and smiled his smile. Now there might be time for Bragi and the west. He was sad, though, that he hadn't found Mocker. Where the h.e.l.l was that little tub of lard?

He couldn't know that his bolt had removed the only obstacle to Pracchia control of Shinsan. His action would have an effect exactly opposite his intent.

He fought. And broke through, leaving a trail of dead men.

He stayed to find and free Mocker.

He remained at liberty long enough to b.l.o.o.d.y the halls of that fortress, to learn that Mocker wasn't there, and had never been. Long enough to convince his hunters that he was no man at all, but a blood-drinking devil.

THIRTY: The Other Side

The Old Man watched dreamily as the Star Rider reactivated the Power and opened a transfer stream.

A gang tumbled through immediately. A bewildered boy and a maskless Tervola followed. Curses pursued them. Then a javelin flickered through, smashed into the Tervola's skull.

The Old Man and Star Rider froze, stunned. Then, cursing, the bent man scuttled after the boy. Catching him, he demanded, "What happened?" Panic edged his voice.

Everything was going wrong. The leukemia victim had expired. The Mercenary's Guild had cleansed itself. There had been no time to replace Pracchia members. Now Chin, his most valuable tool, lay dead at his feet. "Help him!" he roared at the Old Man, before the Fadema could answer his question.

The Old Man knelt beside the Tervola. It was hopeless. The javelin had jellied Chin's brain.

"Ragnarson," the Fadema whined.

"What? What about him?"

"He crossed the steppes. He made an alliance with Necremnos. He came down the Roe and attacked from boats. He captured the Fadem. We barely held on till transfer time."

The others began arriving. They milled around, trying to comprehend the latest disaster."Move along! Move along!" the Star Rider shouted. "Get to the meeting room."

Badalamen came through. He looked dashing dressed as a desert general.

"Who's this?" the bent man demanded, indicating the boy.

"The fat man's son. His wife got away."

"Take him to the meeting room." He kicked Chin's corpse. "Incompetent. Can't get anybody to do anything right. Argon was supposed to be ready for war." Pettily, viciously, he used the Power to murder the Fadema's soldiers.

He asked the Old Man, "How will I ever get out of here?" Then, "Drag the bodies to Norath's pets." He kicked Chin again.

While working, the Old Man slowly put together the thought that he had never seen his master behave this irrationally.

He wandered to the meeting room once he finished, arriving amidst a heated discussion.