Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

“Keepers are their own laws,” Toom said soberly. “Some have allowed whole armies to pass through Thume unmolested. Others have put shipwrecked mariners to death. The uncertainty is part of the mystery, you see.”

“No one has ever been allowed to remain,” Raim added, “until now.” His gold eyes twinkled at Rap.

And Rap was at a loss. He could not tell if this conversation was as innocent as it seemed, or if the two archons were deliberately passing the stranger a message they dared not speak directly. Perhaps he was merely more worldly and cynical than they, jumping to unintended conclusions, or perhaps there was a scent of mutiny in the air. Delicate and childlike we may seem, they were telling him, but pixies have a strong sense of territory, which makes us ruthless toward trespassers. That observation let a man leap easily to a very interesting conclusion. The Keeper has refused to participate in your war against the Covin, but she will feel otherwise if our own borders are violated. Was Rap supposed to make that jump? Was he expected to go one jump farther: There is a way you can provoke such an invasion? Surely not!

“You trust this boundary spell to deflect the Covin?” Both archons nodded.

“Even knowing that Zinixo will live for centuries? Even knowing that he may leave a successor as powerful as himself to rule for more centuries after him?”

Again two nods, less vigorous.

“I am delighted to hear it,” Rap said dryly. “What exactly was it that you wished to discuss?”

Toom’s plain face registered uneasiness. He passed the question to Raim with a meaningful glance.

“The caliph.”

“The caliph? And what is my old friend Azak up to?” Astonishment! Dismay! Both men spoke at once.

Rap threw up his hands, remembering that he was dealing with an alien culture, was speaking a language that he had been given by Thaile’s sorcery, and was therefore liable to cause accidental misunderstandings. “I expressed myself loosely. My wife was married to him once. I have met him a couple of times. We are not on terms of affection, though. Frankly, I consider him a bloodthirsty barbarian.”

The archons nodded their agreement vigorously.

“Caliph Azak,” Raim said, “is presently set on invading the Impire. He is leading an army of about sixty thousand along the northern coast.”

The population of Krasnegar was about five thousand. Rap whistled, trying to hide an amusement he knew he should be ashamed of. “Into Thume?”

“Into Thume:”

Thume had a problem! “And the Covin is watching?” Raim nodded glumly. “So the Keeper says.”

Still Rap struggled against a smile. The outside world was a threat the pixies were warned against from infancy, and it had few worse horrors to offer than a djinn army. A djinn army would worry jotnar, let alone pixies. There was something oddly funny about so terrible a danger threatening so peaceful a people, like a lion squaring off against a rabbit. It would not be funny, of course, if Thume did not have the Keeper to defend it. The rabbit was armed.

But this was the millennium, and perhaps the joke was over. “I comprehend your concern,” he said cautiously. “If you cause the army to disappear, then the Covin may wonder why and start to investigate? And if you just leave it alone—”

“We cannot just leave it alone,” Toom growled. “The coast is inhabited. That is where the mundanes live, in the real-world Thume.”

“You could—well, the Keeper could—transfer the entire army to this Thume, or some other plane altogether?”

“The caliph’s own sorcerers would certainly notice, and likely the Covin, also.”

“So you must turn it back,” Rap said. He thought that was obvious, but their reaction showed there was another possibility. “I have missed something?”

The archons exchanged uneasy glances.

“The Keeper. . .” Raim said. “I mean, we. We are considering the possibility of a, er, natural disaster.” He refilled the three goblets and then drained his.

Toom cracked his big knuckles. “An artificial natural disaster, you see.”

Rap maintained a skeptical silence. He had not yet fathomed the distribution of authority in the College. Possibly there was no fixed rule, and it varied over the years. The archons seemed to do the day-to-day work of running the College and guarding the borders. The Keeper kept watch on the Outside that much she had told him herself—but the Keeper must also have the last word in any disagreement. Even eight sorcerers in unison could not stand up to a demigod, any more than a mage could resist a sorcerer, or a demigod defy the Gods. The Gods Themselves must obey the Powers.

“There is a lake in the mountains,” Raim muttered. “A very large lake. There is a valley leading down to the coast.”

That made no sense to Rap. “I am sure Azak is too experienced with desert campaigning ever to pitch camp in a dry riverbed.” Even in Krasnegar flash floods were a hazard in the hills after summer storms.

“A landslide,” Raim said. “A minor earth tremor could drop half a mountain into that lake.”

Rap shuddered and took a drink.

They were waiting for him to comment. “So the djinn army, or a fair chunk of it, would be washed away by a tidal wave? An inland tidal wave! Don’t you think the Covin might be just a teeny bit suspicious of this fortunate coincidence?”

Neither archon replied. Neither was looking at him.

He wondered if the Keeper was aware of this twitch of mutiny within her ranks. Or had she set this up? Somebody was having an attack of conscience—who? To wipe out an army with sorcery was a throwback to brutality not seen since the War of the Five Warlocks. And obviously it might alert the Covin.

“What you are telling me, gentlemen,” he said—trying to omit any inferences about what they might not have said but had tried to imply, “is that your precious border spell may not be adequate protection if anything draws the Covin’s attention specifically to Thume? Zinixo himself is insanely suspicious, right? You are also saying that you cannot stop Azak’s army without using substantial sorcery, one way or another. Even if you just let him pass through, the Covin would lose track of him and wonder where he had gone. Have I summarized the situation accurately?”

Toom nodded. “We are not practiced in such matters.”

“Nor am I. I assume that you are about to ask me to wander over and kill the caliph for you?”

Their shocked expressions were answer enough. Apparently the idea had not occurred to them.

“We merely wished to pose the problem,” Toom protested, and see if you had any suggestions to make. Your experience has been different from ours.”

“I’ll not argue that,” Rap said. “Have you considered an assassination, though?”

“He has sorcerers in his train to protect him.”

“They may be as afraid of the Covin as you are.”

Toom pulled a scowl that seemed oddly unsuited on his naive pixie face. ”We are not afraid! The Covin does not know we exist and never will. The Keeper has assured us of this.”

“Oh, of course,” Rap agreed. “Absolutely. Assassination?” The archons exchanged worried looks. If they conferred in the ambience, though, they managed to conceal their talk from Rap. They seemed almost more upset by the idea of a single cold-blooded murder than they had been at a massacre of an entire army. Murder was personal, massacre beyond comprehension.

Raim said, “What good would assassination do? The army would just elect a new leader and continue its march.”

Rap hesitated, but decided not to argue the point. He could try to explain to the pixies that djinns elected their leaders by elimination and that a new caliph would probably race back to Zark to stamp out a hundred rebellions. Even if the archons could understand that, though, Rap must then concede that the army might tear itself apart in the election. The losing half rampaging out of control into Thume would be even worse than the whole sixty thousand, with Azak in charge. Cancel assassination.

He ran his hands through his hair, pondering aloud. “That does suggest the right sort of answer—what you want is a purely mundane solution, using no sorcery at all, or very little. If Azak caught a fever, for example. But that isn’t too likely, is it? Not to order. How far away is he?”

“Not very.”

Rap took a sip of mead. What was his interest in this? The Covin was his foe—not Azak, not Thume. He wanted the College and the Keeper to throw their weight into the battle against Zinixo, and this situation might well trigger an attack on them that would force their hand. But the idea of a djinn army ravaging the pixies’ peaceful land was appalling. Djinns would be bad enough by themselves; if Zinixo fired them up to slaughter, they would destroy everything in their path. Rap could not just sit back and let such a disaster happen without trying to help somehow. He could not live with himself if he allowed that to happen. Why was he so cursed with scruples?