There he would meet whatever it was that had burned out his foresight in white flame. He would have been shaking like a terrified child had he not been using his powers to calm himself. At least he thought he was; at that level it was hard to know what was occult and what was just wishing. But he wasn’t going to let the old man see his fear, not after promising he would help. Running away would solve nothing. Back wounds hurt twice, Sergeant Thosolin had liked to say.
“Shandie, my boy? Wake up, soldier!”
“Grandfather?” Shandie seemed to smile in his sleep. He rolled over and sat up. The grin became a yawn, and he stretched his broomstick arms.
Emshandar had paused before a full-length mirror to inspect his appearance. ”My shroud has slipped,” he muttered disgustedly.
“I don’t suppose you could make me look . . . no, never mind.” He turned to his grandson. “Come along, lad. We’ve got to go and meet the wardens.”
Already scrambling crabwise toward the edge of the bed, Shandie froze, and his eyes fixed on his grandfather in horror. Suddenly his happiness had vanished and he was petrified. Rap found that curious.
“Hurry!” the imperor said.
“Do you really think he need come, Sire?” Rap said.
He provoked an Imperial glare that could have razed a city. Obviously a chance to see the Four in action would be an important part of the heir’s education. Equally obviously, Shandie was a vital element in the cloacal ferment of Imperial politics and should not be left around unguarded at this important moment. Most obvious of all, his grandfather had not noticed the boy’s freezing dread.
“Come, soldier! On your feet! Pity we haven’t got time to dress you properly.”
With a gasp of relief, Shandie came back to life. He slid down off the bed. Now he was beaming again. “All the wardens coming tonight, Grandfather?”
What was going on inside that maltreated little mind? Somehow the question seemed important to Rap’s battered premonition, despite that talent’s present hysterically overworked condition.
“I could make a toga for him, Sire, if that’s what you mean.”
Emshandar said, “Of course!” approvingly, but Shandie quailed as if his nightmare had engulfed him again, gazing up at Rap accusingly. Why should togas bother him so? Could his fear be in some way related to the savage beating he had received the previous night?
The imperor had still not noticed. “Excellent! Pray do that, Sorcerer.”
“What color?” Then Rap wondered if he was just trying to delay the inevitable a little longer. He did not look at the Rotunda.
“Plain white,” the imperor said. “Quick!”
“Easy,” Rap said. “Stand up straight, tribune.”
The boy’s fright was as intense as it was inexplicable, but he was trying very hard not to show it to either his grandfather or his new sorcerer friend. Yet he was shaking.
“Do you want a roll of thunder, or just a quiet sort of sorcery?”
“No thunder please, Rap.” The big eyes stayed locked on the sorcerer. Rap’s humor had not stopped his chin quivering.
“Very well. White toga . . .” Rap ensorceled the boy’s garments to a replica of his grandfather’s tunic and toga, in white. He added gold sandals and ran an invisible comb over the short wavy hair. “That looks not bad at all!” he said admiringly, mostly to himself.
“If anyone tries to beat you, I’ll turn him into a walrus!” he promised.
Shandie tried a shaky smile and a nod. Then he set his jaw and squared his shoulders in an obvious imitation of his grandfather, although he was still almost ill with his inexplicable terror. Rap’s promise of protection was not reaching deep enough to soothe it away.
But if a puny child like him could do his duty despite such fear, then Rap should be able to attend to his. Whatever it was.
Aargh! Another quick scan showed him that time was running out. “Ythbane’s arrived, Sire! With his wife. He’s carrying something.”
“A buckler and sword. Quick, Master Sorcerer! We must hurry. Your garb now.”
Rap balked like a horse put to the face of a cliff. He was a churl, not a patrician. Besides, those ridiculous wrappings left half the shins uncovered.
“I don’t think so!”
The imperor flushed. “Only foreign dignitaries attend the Rotunda without formal court dress!”
“I do.”
“You can’t go like that!”
“I go like this or not at all!” An imp toga, goblin tattoos, and faun legs?
For a moment he thought Emshandar was going to order his head cut off. Veins swelled under the papery skin.
“Do you know what you’re going to look like to them? What they’ll think of you?”
“A bumpkin, a yokel.”
“Well?” the old man thundered. Shandie’s eyes widened in alarm.
“That’s what I am,” Rap said stubbornly. “You want my help? You take me as I am, or not at all!” Ythbane had mounted the lower step of the dais. He was one step from the Opal Throne.
“God of Fools!” the imperor muttered angrily. “Well, then, let’s go!” He glanced at the silken bellrope dangling by the bed. “A litter . . . there isn’t time for that, is there? Can you magic us there?”
“Yes, Sire. But if the wardens are watching, it’ll scorch their eyeballs!”
“Let it!”
Rap shrugged. All very well to say so, but how was this done? He remembered Ishist saying that Lith’rian could move himself around without a magic portal, by means of sheer brute power. Mmm!
Well, he obviously must not lose anyone on the way, so he stepped between his companions to take hold of the imperor’s thin elbow and Shandie’s clammy little hand. He sharpened his view of the ambience . . . the encircling darkness that was the Opal Palace . . . the twinkling minor magics of Hub beyond . . . beacons shining on high towers in the wardens’ lairs . . . occasional flickers beyond the horizon from sorcerers dwelling in distant lands.
He concentrated on the looming threat of the great Rotunda, estimating distance and elevations. “Ready?” he asked his companions. Then he held the three of them still, and moved the ambience.
Fortune’s fool:
BENVOLIO: The Prince will doom thee death If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!
ROMEO: O, I am Fortune’s fool!
BENVOLIO: Why dost thou stay?
— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III i
NINE
Sacred flame
1
Within the nested darkness of Emine’s Rotunda, under the myriad little flames and crystals of two candelabra, the Opal Throne crouched in wisps of many somber hues, dreaming of the evils it had known.
Before the throne, the regent stood on the top step, clad in purple toga and armed with the Imperial regalia. One step down, his wife sat on a chair. An empty chair on the other side was likely intended for Shandie.
Ythbane. glanced over his audience, as if counting that no one was missing. Straight ahead of him, at the end of the tapering indigo mosaic, stood South’s Blue Throne. Below its single candelabrum, it was a floe of light adrift on a sea of darkness.
And then the imperor came striding out of that darkness with his grandson and a sorcerer. The spectators learned the news first from Ythbane’s face. They turned quickly to inspect the newcomers.
Holding his eyes firmly on the usurper, Rap could still scan the company. Inos was there, of course, and the look she was giving him was quite appalling shameless. Her dumpy aunt beamed at her side. The pleated gown rather suited her, tactfully hiding her bulges. All the women looked chilled. The men were better off, in their heavy togas. Azak was lowering and uncertain—so he should be, wrapped in that sail. Why couldn’t he have been given djinn costume? A scarlet-crested helmet located Marshal Ithy, and a man in a purple-hemmed white toga had to be a consul. Three men in red togas and a woman in a red dress must be senators. Bare chested and helmeted, Ambassador Krushjor and another jotunn were staying well back on the north side of the illuminated area. Little Chicken was with them, also in jotunn breeches. He was the only person smiling, unless you called that outrageous glazed simper of Inos’s a smile.
Rap wished he knew more of the politics. Who ought to be present and was not? Which patiently loyal supporters still waited forgotten in the Emerald Hall? No one of importance, he suspected. Ythbane was depressingly confident.
The warlocks were Emshandar’s only hope now. Would they answer the regent’s summons? Whose side would they take?
As Rap reached the front of the onlookers, he stopped and laid a hand on Shandie’s puny shoulder to stop him, also.
Emshandar went on alone, a gaunt, white-haired wraith of vengeance, a striding skeleton swathed in purple. He halted before the dais and straightened from his usual stoop. For a moment he stared at Uomaya, who hung her head and did not look at her father-in-law. Then he lifted his gaze to Ythbane, who smiled.