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

“No!” Rap said.

Shandie chuckled silently. Some chance!

He raised his arms and his voice again. “He declines! Tell me once more: Whom do you wish to be the fourth warden?” This time the roar was instantaneous and seemed likely to lift the dome off the Rotunda.

“You seem to be the unanimous choice, your Majesty!” Shandie said.

The faun scowled horribly and looked to his wife and son. They grinned at him.

“No!” Rap said.

Only two or three people in all history had ever refused a warden’s throne, and this made five times for him. He had invented the protocol, led the revolt, been the only sorcerer in the world not votarized by Zinixo, and he had no mundane loyalties except to his own obscure little kingdom, not even a loyalty of race. His prayer had brought the God. He was the inevitable choice.

Shandie looked around cheerfully. “We must convince a faun, brothers and sisters! Tell me that name again.” Louder still: “RAP!”

Rap glared at Shandie and shook his head.

With anyone else, Shandie might have brought up the daughter’s sacrifice, but not with this man.

“King Rap! Remember the millennium! Will you have the history books mourn for what might have been? `If only Rap had accepted the warlock’s throne,’ they will say, `then the bad times might have been averted.’ “

Rap scowled.

His wife gave him a gentle push.

With a grimace, he stalked across to the vacant platform where the Gold Throne had once stood. He stopped before it, paused for a moment, head down, as if in thought. The Rotunda was breathless. Then he turned.

“I have conditions! Four conditions.”

“Name them!”

“First, there shall be no more votarism.”

“Agreed!” Shandie said, and looked to the audience. ”Agreed?” He did not ask the wardens. At the moment they did not matter.

“Agreed!” roared the assembled sorcerers.

“And no more shielding! Sorcery shall be done openly, and never to do harm!”

“Agreed!”

Again Rap pulled a face, as if he had been hoping for an excuse to withdraw. ”Third . . . You heard the God decree this building immune to sorcery. This is Longday. Let us hold a Sorcerers’ Moot here on Longday every year—to elect wardens, to judge their performance, and to approve their actions.”

This time the roar was louder yet, and tailed away slowly. Shandie glanced around. Raspnex was leering. Grunth looked impressed. Lith’rian was white with fury.

Rap seemed to sigh. “And finally, I think we need a Council of Sorcery to advise the wardens. Twelve, one delegate elected from each race. Their first task will be to draw up the text of the new protocol.”

The cheering began slowly for that one, then surged higher and higher as the audience saw the implications. Shandie had never heard an inkling of this proposal before, but it was brilliant. It would shackle the wardens hand and foot and neck, as the Emine’s Protocol never had. Rap could not possibly have made that up on the spur of the moment. He must have foreseen this whole little drama, but when had he had time to do that?

Three thousand sorcerers were on their feet now, a rhythmic shout of Rap! Rap! Rap! beating the air like a drum.

The new warlock stepped up on the platform and bowed to the assembly.

3

This could go on all day! Inos looked around the crowded rotunda. Everyone seemed ready to stay put until winter. The fat imp, whoever he was, was sitting all alone on the floor, clutching a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. He seemed to have forgotten it, though, being totally engrossed in the proceedings. Shandie was making another speech, something to do with elections for the proposed Council of Sorcery. Glittering in his orders and decorations up there on the throne, he was displaying a remarkable skill in politics, but he had been trained for that all his life. What of his family? Ignored if not forgotten, Eshiala knelt on the floor, trying to comfort a hungry, terrified, and desperate child.

Inos herself had not had anything to eat yet, either, and felt faint because of it.

And what of Krasnegar? Against his will, Rap had been sucked into a geopolitical swamp. He would do a fine job, but he would not wriggle free of it in short order, so Inos would have to attend to their kingdom by herself. Gath? Gath was staring entranced at his father the warlock, but Rap would have no more spare time for fathering than he would for ruling Krasnegar, and the thought of a fourteen-year-old heir apparent loose in the jungles of the Imperial court was enough to give her a migraine. Once the mothers of Hub learned about him, he wouldn’t last a week.

Inos opened her mouth

And then closed it. Gath was still only a boy, but he had fought with sorcerers, sailed with raiders, and proved himself a hero in public—and that was just this morning. What else he might have achieved in the last couple of months did not bear thinking about. If she tried to order her son around now like the child he was, she would create a major conflict. Tact was needed.

“Gath?” she whispered.

He jumped and looked down at his mother with his father’s gray eyes. ”Mom?”

“I need your help!”

“Oh?” He swelled. “Yes, Mom?” His smile revealed the tooth that Brak had broken for him, the day they left Krasnegar. She wondered if young Brak had been rotting in the royal dungeon ever since.

“Krasnegar!”

He blinked as if he had never heard the name before. “What about it?”

“I must go back there! You have sorcerer friends, don’t you?”

“Yes!” He beamed. “Several, actually.”

“I knew I could depend on you! Come on, then.”

She walked over to Eshiala. Even such beauty as the impress’ was barely proof against such a day. She looked up with pathetic relief as she saw help approach.

Inos smiled comfortingly. “This will go on for hours!” she said. ”Why don’t you come and have lunch with me?”

As they left the auditorium, Inos looked back and saw both Rap and Shandie staring after them. She waved a cheerful farewell and kept on going, along a corridor half full of stacked lumber.

“I’m not sure I know the way!” Eshiala said. “Master Jaurg can find it. Can’t you?” Inos said.

The blind youth smiled sadly. He had a hand on Gath’s shoulder. “Not easily, your Majesty. Once we are outside the Rotunda, then I shall be a sorcerer again.”

“Of course—foolish of me. Well, let’s just try. I wonder where all the workmen are?”

“Longday is a holiday,” the impress pointed out. “But what if there are guards on the outer doors?”

“You’re the impress!” Inos said cheerfully. “Order them to report to Guwush immediately. Gath, can you carry Uomaya?” Gath obviously realized now how he had been trapped. He scowled, but he lifted the little girl. Maya was almost beyond protest.

“Just don’t tell me to comb my hair!” he muttered crossly.

“I was thinking of it,” Inos said.

It was early morning in Krasnegar. The sky was a washy blue, the sun lower than expected and the air cool, as the royal party materialized in the forecourt of the castle. A few wandering pedestrians gaped in rank amazement. The man-at-arms at the gate dropped his pike with a clang.

“Well, it’s still here, anyway!” Inos said. Dear, dowdy, down-at-the-heels little town! How small and shabby it looked! Registering relief, Gath deposited a squirming Maya on the cobbles. “Everything seems all right.” He grinned. “We’re going to eat soon! Not you, though, Mom.” His prescience was working again.

Inos shivered as the climate bit through her thin Thumian skirt and blouse. ”Why not me?”

“Because the council’s in session!”

She felt a rush of relief that made her tremble. If the council was still meeting, then the kingdom had not dissolved in civil war. And it had not been flattened by the usurper. “Who’s in charge?”

“Er-That’s queen’s work.” Gath’s face had assumed an odd expression. “Jaurg and I will be disposing of a roast kid.” He glanced at the impress. “With your help, too, ma’am, of course.”

“Excellent beer you have here, Atheling,” Sorcerer Jaurg remarked with a smile—either to show that Gath was not the only one with prescience, or just to give his mother something else to worry about. Gath was a beer drinker now?

Eshiala was staring up in astonishment at the spiky towers of Inisso’s castle, black against the pale northern sky. Maya had uttered a whoop and gone racing off after the white pigeons. Bystanders were dropping to their knees to honor their long-lost queen. Ignoring his fallen pike, the guard rushed in through the gate to spread the news.

“Come on, then!” Inos said, starting for the gate. She waved graciously at the kneeling citizens, and they began to cheer. Pigeons clattered noisily upward to escape the princess imperial.