“I know Azak.” Rap smiled meanly at him. “He had a very nasty experience with sorcery in his youth. He detests it with a passion. But I dropped in to see him once—I went to collect my dog, as a matter of fact—and I detected power in use within his palace. How do you think he made himself overlord of a continent?”
Shandie swore under his breath. “He enlisted sorcerers? How?”
“Perhaps he appealed to their patriotism.”
“Olybino never told me. He never even hinted at that!” Acopulo hrumphed. “But he certainly helped you against the djinn army at Bone Pass. Perhaps that was why!”
“And that was Azak’s only real defeat! Yes, I can see that the caliph should be informed. We agreed to seek out the mundane rulers, and the caliph is the most powerful ruler.” Shandie scowled bitterly. “Except the imperor, of course! I’ll write a letter for you to take.”
“So will I,” Rap said. “He doesn’t like me, but he’s a smart man. And if he’s planning an invasion of the Impire, as everyone seems to be assuming he is, then he will be interested to know that the rules have changed.”
Obviously Shandie and Acopulo felt uneasy at that. So did Ylo, although he had never considered himself a rabid patriot. This program was sounding more and more like an attempt to rally the outlanders against the Impire. Was this what was required of outlaws?
“I have never visited Zark,” the scholar said, pouting. “The weather should be pleasant at this time of year.”
“You may find it overly warm,” King Rap said innocently. “The djinns roast spies over slow fires. So we are decided? Shandie and Ylo to Krasnegar and then perhaps Nordland? Me to the Mosweeps and Nogids. Sir Acopulo to Zark. Warlock Raspnex to wherever the Evil he wants. After that, we sing what the Gods hum.” He paused and scratched his unruly mop of hair. “IIrane . . . Zark . . . The preflecting pool? You know, I have the strangest feeling I’ve forgotten something!”
“Old age catching up with you?” Sagorn remarked acidly. ”Perhaps. Well, I expect I’ll remember as soon as it’s too late. If—I survive the anthropophagi, then I may head to Ilrane and try to visit with Lith’rian.” He regarded the imperor thoughtfully. “And you? You might think about the Nintor Moot.”
“In Nordland?”
“Why not? Every summer the thanes go to the Nintor Moot and chop each other up for sport. I don’t suppose they’ll mind a few imps to use for practice. The moot would be your only chance to spread the word in Nordland.”
For a moment the listeners fell silent. The distances involved were enormous. This campaign had begun to look like the rest of their lives. Ylo shivered. He had not realized that the pool might have been showing him not the next crop of daffodils, but the one after.
“We shall need to set up a rendezvous,” Acopulo said prissily.
The faun shook his head. “If any one of us is taken, he will reveal it. The same would be true of anyone else we had told. A rendezvous would certainly be betrayed somehow.”
“A date, then?” Shandie said, frowning. “A date for the uprising? A call to arms?”
“Not even that, and for the same reason.” The king looked to the warlock; the dwarf nodded his big head, sneering in agreement.
“You must understand,” the faun said, “that this is not a mundane war. This is not Guwush and we are not gnomish rebels opposing the Imperial might. No sneak attacks and hideouts in the forest and secret passwords. It won’t work that way!”
The imperor stared at him incredulously for a long time and no one else spoke.
Rap shrugged. “If you want a picture, it’s more like a houseful of mice planning to mob the cat.”
Shandie pulled a face. “You are saying we try to rally the mice but we don’t tell them when or where to rally? That’s crazy! What are we trying to accomplish? What do we tell these sorcerers we seek to enlist? What message do we send when we speak to mundane leaders?”
“Just that there is hope, and a cause worth fighting for.” Rap sighed. “One day there will be a battle! We don’t know when, or where, or who will provoke it. When it comes, we shall have to gamble everything we’ve got—at once, to the death. But every sorcerer in Pandemia will know of it as soon as it starts. We want them to come and help, that’s all. Until then, they can only do what we are doing—pass the word and keep the faith.”
“As I recall,” Sagom said, his tone implying that his recall was normally perfect, “all the Dragon Wars were like that. Enormous battles followed by long periods of uneasy quiet.”
Shandie sat in silence, his face blank, which was his thinking expression. Then he nodded. “I suppose it makes sense. As you say, it’s a different sort of fighting.” He smiled faintly. “I wish you luck in the Mosweeps—and with the elf. Ylo, we head north, it would appear.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ylo said blandly. But not much.
The imperor rose and stretched. “It’s been a long day, and I’d like to sleep on this. We all have our parts to play, it would seem. You realize that we may scatter tomorrow and never all meet again? May the Gods be with us!”
“Amen,” Acopulo said.
“You have left one out,” the dwarf growled.
Everyone looked to Doctor Sagorn. He glanced around at the attention, twisting his long jotunn face in an arrogant sneer that raised Ylo’s hackles.
The faun chuckled. “Old age, Doctor? How do you feel about scrambling in and out of fishing boats tomorrow?”
“I abhor the prospect. If you have concluded your deliberations, then the time has come for me to leave.”
“And go where?” the imperor barked.
“Nowhere.”
Such an absurdity demanded explanation. Obviously the faun sorcerer knew the answer but was not about to disclose it. Smirking, he yawned and snuggled down more comfortably in his chair. The silence dragged on.
Glaring, the old jotunn said, “You will not warn your companions what to expect?”
“But you can tell the tale so much better than I, Doctor! And one of us certainly must.”
“Very well!” Sagorn turned to the imperor. “Your Majesty . . . this is a strange tale, and one I have rarely told anyone. It may sound improbable, but I shall demonstrate its truth in a moment.”
Shandie sat down again. “Carry on.”
“If I asked you to estimate my age, I expect you would guess me to be in my seventies, perhaps early eighties.”
Acopulo released a long hiss of breath.
The jotunn shot him a killer glare out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, there is sorcery involved, as you suspected and I denied.”
“When were you born?” the little man demanded.
“You will not . . . 2859.”
“Even better preserved than I thought!” Acopulo said jubilantly.
Now, thought Ylo, some mysteries were about to be cleared up.
Scowling, Sagorn turned back to the imperor. “I age at a normal rate, sire, but I have not lived through all the intervening years. When I was ten, I irked a sorcerer. I was the youngest of a group of five boys whose presence in his house in the middle of the night he found distasteful, as he had not instigated it. In retribution, he laid a sequential spell on us.”
Shandie’s eyes narrowed. “Explain `sequential spell.’”
“It means that only one of us can exist at a time.”
“The artist!” Ylo had shouted without meaning to; he had made everyone jump.
Sagom pouted—his long upper lip was well shaped for pouting. “As you say, the artist. Master Jalon is one of the five. At one time he was older than I, in fact I think he was the oldest. How old does he seem now—late twenties? When you forced your way into our house last night, Jalon was present. You demanded to see me, but I did not exist! That was why he refused to let the centurion accompany him when he went to fetch me. He invoked the spell, and I replaced him. Now he does not exist. I propose to depart by the same method, which should wipe the skeptical expression off your pretty young face.”
“So sometimes you are you and sometimes you are Jalon?” Sagorn grimaced impatiently. “You do not listen, boy. I am not Jalon, and never have been. I do share his memories, but we are two separate people.”
“So now you disappear,” Shandie asked, “and Master Jalon appears?”
“No.”
The king of Krasnegar seemed to be struggling with a need to laugh.
Sagorn glared at him briefly. “There are constraints, sire. I can neither call the man who called me, nor the man I called the last time.”