“You can always tell, can’t you?” Eigaze murmured vaguely. “I suppose there was about a minute,” Ionfeu said. “The impress embraced her husband . . . He said something to the lord herald . . . Then the warlock appeared. A minute at the most.”
“The Opal Throne was facing which way?”
“North. It was a north day. The four thrones of the wardens are arranged around the perimeter . . . but of course you are familiar with the Rotunda.”
Rap shivered. “Very! I almost died there once.”
So Raspnex had been temporarily senior warden of the Four. It had been his right to invoke the council. Was that significant, or would he have intruded anyway? What in the name of Evil were the Four up to? What was really happening in the occult politics of the Impire? Rap ground his teeth in frustration. Midnight had passed, so technically the senior warden was now East—Warlock Olybino, pompous idiot. Did that matter?
“Everyone turned to see,” the count said. “I told you how dark it had been getting, and the White Throne sort of blazed . . . well, glowed, maybe. Like a lantern. All the jewels sparkled. And the warlock was standing in front of it, on the dais.”
“I know Raspnex, too,” Rap said. “Surly as any dwarf, but not a conspicuously evil person.” How much could eighteen years change a man? ”Just a year since he became warden?”
“A little less.”
“He’s a middling-powerful sorcerer, is all.” When Bright Water had died, why had the remaining three wardens not found a stronger replacement to be warlock, or witch, of the north? The count described Raspnex’s dramatic demand that the new imperor have himself proclaimed immediately. He smiled as he described the ancient chief herald’s paralysis and the fast action by Signifer Ylo, reciting the proclamation from memory.
“He sounds like a very quick-thinking man,” Rap remarked, but the Shandie he had known had been a sharp, zealous boy. He would never have grown up to become the sort of ineffectual leader who surrounded himself with dullards.
“Ylo was always a scallywag.” Eigaze sighed. “His mother was a close friend. He still calls me Aunt. Er . . . He is an Yllipo, you know.” In the dark, her face displayed a sorrow that she would have masked by day.
“The last of the Yllipos,” her husband agreed.
“What is an Yllipo?” Rap inquired, puzzled by their sudden discomfort.
“They were a very rich family,” Ionfeu said cautiously, “a large, long-established clan. Three or four years ago there was a scandal. Accusations of treason . . .” Even more warily he added, “Emshandar probably overreacted. He was very old, of course.”
Imps did not lightly speak ill of their imperors, especially a newly dead one. Only one man left, out of a whole clan? Rap drew his own conclusions—and then wondered how that solitary survivor had turned up as close confidant of Emshandar’s grandson and heir. Curious!
“So Shandie was proclaimed imperor by his signifer . . . Emshandar V, of course?”
“Of course.”
Eigaze chuckled. “The whole Impire calls him Shandie, though!”
“Long may it do so,” her husband said.
With a muttered excuse, Rap rose to direct the coachman around the comer into Acacia Street. Sagorn’s house had several entrances, but there was no reason not to go to the public one tonight.
“Almost there,” he said as he sat down.
“Well, you know the rest,” the count said. “Shandie took up the sword and buckler and tried to summon the other wardens. Only Witch Grunth answered the call.”
“And very briefly!” Eigaze remarked disapprovingly.
“But her mere appearance was enough to show that the wardens acquiesce in his accession. Two wardens are enough. He’s legally imperor now, until his dying day.”
Rap knew Grunth, also, if only from afar. She was reasonably powerful, but indolent, like most trolls. With a painful sense of time passing, he realized that the big woman had reigned for eighteen years now. She had replaced the odious Zinixo.
And always he felt that nagging hunch that Zinixo was in some way responsible for the incorporate evil now looming over the world. Sorcerers’ hunches tended to have sharp edges.
Neither Raspnex nor Grunth seemed the type of person to overthrow the Protocol and plunge the world into chaos. Olybino, now, was a dimwitted, posturing idiot. The warlock of the east might get himself involved in almost anything. And Lith’rian of the south was an elf and therefore totally unpredictable by any normal logic. Why had those two not appeared in the Rotunda to hail the new imperor?
Peering along Acacia Street, Rap detected a group of three carriages standing in the snow, guarded by a score or so of Hussars. The horses whinnied greetings to one another. The coachman could probably make out the light of the lanterns now. What would the neighbors be thinking of this invasion? Sagorn and his associates would be furious at having their privacy disturbed.
“I wish I could remember the dwarf’s final words exactly,” Ionfeu said. “I may not have heard them correctly, even. The Rotunda echoes so much when it isn’t crowded, and he has a very low-pitched voice.”
“As I recall Raspnex,” Rap said, “he sounds like a major rock slide at close quarters. Would you permit me to jog your memory?”
He saw the horrified expression that darkness was supposed to hide, but the old count’s voice was quite steady as he said, “By all means do so, Sire.”
The amount of power needed was infinitesimal, little more than the charm dispensed by a fairground hypnotist. Minds were easy to influence.
“Good Gods!” the count said. “I . . . Bless my soul! Er . . . Would you consider quoting me a price on reviving the rest of my memories, also, your Majesty?”
“I’m not sure you’d thank me. Everything might be a little too much.”
“Yes . . . I see the danger.” Still blinking, Ionfeu chuckled uneasily and again tried to make himself more comfortable on the bench. ”What Warlock Raspnex said before he vanished was, `Now flee, Emshandar! Take your wife and your child and begone, for the city is no longer safe for you. The Protocol is overthrown, and Chaos rules the world!’ That’s it exactly!”
His wife smiled uncertainly at him and fumbled for his hand to squeeze. ”And then the four thrones all exploded as if they’d been hit by thunderbolts,” she said, “simultaneously! Whatever message that was supposed to convey, I do feel it was expressed with rather vulgar intensity.”
“Thank you,” Rap said grimly, although he had learned little new. Without the Protocol to control the political use of sorcery, the world would become a place of nightmare and horror.
The carriage rumbled to a halt alongside the others. A bronze-clad arm reached up to open the door.
2
The willowy Hussars in their dandified uniforms stood smartly at attention, but a sorcerer could sense their aura of sulky disapproval. Even more than the foul weather and slummy neighborhood, they resented being under the command of a non-Praetorian. Centurion Hardgraa’s shiny bronze breastplate bore the lion insignia of the XIIth Legion. That had been old Emshandar’s outfit and young Shandie’s, also.
The centurion was a gnarled hulk of a man, who glared with dark suspicion at the stranger. His nose had been broken at least once, and the thick torso under his armor bore many old scars. When Rap was introduced, however, his ugly face at once broke into a wide grin. He saluted sharply. Apparently he had brains to go with his bulk, as was to be expected of a prince’s bodyguard.
“The imperor will be delighted to learn of your arrival, your Majesty,” he rumbled.
“And I shall be happy to renew our acquaintance, Centurion. No, forget the pomp; just lead the way.”
Radiating approval of this practical approach, Hardgraa offered the countess an arm to steady her on the snow-laden steps. The newcomers climbed to the front door. Rap could sense the occupants of all the adjoining houses and even those across the street—most of them now abed, some still sitting around, mourning—but the Sagom residence was masked from him by its shielding.
The narrow street was cramped into a gorge by continuous facades of buildings, whose regularly spaced doors and windows implied that the interiors were more or less identical. This was far from the case, however. Sagorn’s dwelling had been extended in all directions at some remote time in the past, stealing rooms and corridors from all its neighbors, so that now it was a complex labyrinth on many levels, a maze of stairways and corridors and oddly shaped rooms. It had entrances on other roads, also.
Halfway up the steps, Rap risked a brief glance at the future. The impact was so intense that he doubled over and almost fell. He slammed his defenses shut again, appalled at the scale of the looming disaster. The distant evil he had sensed for weeks had now infested the city. It was everywhere—perhaps that had been the rumbling of sorcery he had detected earlier. Despair screamed at him that there was no way to resist the tides of history. Every nerve twitched with the need to flee, although he knew of nowhere safe to hide. For a moment he shivered in near panic.