“I was here.”
“That must have been a terrible night.”
“More than you can imagine, in ways more dire than you’ll ever know.”
Mist nodded. Only two living beings knew the full story: this man and Nepanthe. Nepanthe was less likely to share than was Varthlokkur. Mist asked, “How did they get here?”
Varthlokkur responded with a blank look.
“Transfers are how we humble distance in Shinsan. But a transfer needs a sending and a receiving portal. Two sets for two princes. What I know about what happened is mostly hearsay. I never heard how the Princes got here in the first place.”
“I don’t remember. There is a lot about that night that no one remembers. We were all dead for a while.”
“Some more permanently than others, it seems.”
“It was not a pleasant evening. I avoid thinking and talking about it.”
“As you will.”
She considered her father and his brother. “There is no way that they can be brought back?”
“No.”
“Ethrian’s situation put the thought into my head. You’re sure?”
“No one in this…” He paused.
Mist faced him. “The Star Rider did this to them, didn’t he?”
“No. I did. He put the remains on the seats.”
“Can he resurrect them?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he didn’t plan to when he sealed the Wind Tower. But he is a clever devil.”
“Exactly. Considering the example of the Nawami revenants in the eastern desert.”
“You’re right. Sahmaman was barely a ghost. I’ll make sure he finds nothing to work with here.”
“The Star Rider needs to be rendered permanently redundant.” “Have a care with what you say.”
“You disagree?”
“Not at all. I’ll cheerfully entertain suggestions as to how to arrange that. But thousands before us have shared that ambition. Most likely thousands more will do so after we’re gone.”
Mist stared at her father. “It will take a bigger, faster, deadlier rat trap.” Then, “Let’s go back down. This is too depressing. All I really came for was to connect with my children.”
“As you wish.”
She could tell that he considered her prospects doomed.
…
Mist had gone. Neither Scalza nor Ekaterina ever warmed to her. Varthlokkur settled into that room in the Wind Tower, the curtain back and the dust covers off the dead. He reviewed the terrible memories and tried to deal with questions that Mist had raised.
How did the Princes get into Fangdred without having portals waiting?
He had the entire fortress searched, years after the fact. The search turned up exactly what he expected: nothing.
They could have ridden winged demons. In fact, that seemed likely. But those things made a lot of noise.
The weather that night had been terrible… Previously dissociated elements clicked into place. Of course. That weather had not been natural.
Nepanthe’s brothers must have been involved.
Knowing what to look for let him probe the past and discover that the Storm Kings, and Mist herself, had affected events that night.
Insanity. Mist, and many others, had known that the Princes Thaumaturge would be engaged. Everyone had an interest and each thumbed the situation somewhere, trying to shape the outcome subtly. But there was nothing anywhere to clarify the essential question: How had the brothers gotten into the Wind Tower without receiving portals in place?
There was no choice but to believe either the winged demon hypothesis or that portals, since removed, had been placed for them, in secret, beforehand.
It could be that Old Meddler had made it all happen.
And Varthlokkur was no more comfortable about some other questions Mist had raised.
He had to do something with the dead sorcerers. There was no choice about that.
Nepanthe brought tea. She sat with him, her back to the site of the worst night of a life where most every major memory was a bad one. “Ethrian is having a good day. You should spend more time with him. I think that would help.”
“Yes. Certainly. It would be time better spent than sitting here, despairing of yesterday and tomorrow.”
Nepanthe leaned forward. She rested a hand on his. “Let’s just concern ourselves with what we can do today.”
There was a tear in the corner of his left eye when he said, “That should be the way we live.” They rose. He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked toward the doorway. He glanced back at the dead, just once, as he waited for her to step out.
That once gave him an idea.
Chapter Eleven:
Summer, Year 1017 AFE:
Legendary Confusion
H ammad al Nakir simmered with rumors. Everyone wanted to believe that the King Without a Throne had returned.
His very first action had been to kill Magden Norath, ending the terror underpinning bad king Megelin’s throne!
The desert awaited anxiously what would happen next. The man who had caused the ferment had no idea what that should be. Taking Norath down, alerting the world to his survival, had not figured in the fantasies he had indulged during his long trek west.
People would start looking for him. Some would just want to know if it was really him. Others would be frightened. Old Meddler would be upset because his intrigue had been aborted before it could be hatched.
Yasmid and Megelin would want to capture him. The Dread Empire and Varthlokkur had to be considered, too.
He could not hide Haroun bin Yousif from those powers. He had to become someone distinctly not Haroun.
He began immediately. He sold his horses. He bought strange clothing. He acquired a donkey and three goats. He left the desert for the east coast. There he bought a cart for his goats to pull. This and that went into the cart, including all his obvious weapons.
The shore of the Sea of Kotsum was a region where the people followed the Disciple. Bandits and robbers were few.
He came to al-Asadra wearing gaudy apparel and shaved. He had a red demon tattoo on his left cheek and a big blue teardrop falling from the outside corner of his right eye. His own family would not have recognized him.
He had trouble recognizing him, so thoroughly had he dropped into this new character.
He had no long-term plan.
He was an entertainer, now, a role so alien that no one ought ever to look his way with Haroun bin Yousif in mind. He did puppet shows. He used sleight of hand tricks which, due to his lack of skill, compelled him to employ some true sorcery. Carefully. Everyone enjoyed a magic show-so long as they could be sure they were just seeing conjure tricks. And, finally, he told fortunes using a greasy, worn deck found in pawn in the souk where he put on his first show. Their shabbiness lent them credibility.
Divination in any form was illegal but the authorities turned a blind eye so long as the fortuneteller claimed to be an entertainer only.
Cynics would observe that fortunetellers had been around for millennia before El Murid and they would exist still long after El Murid had been forgotten by even the most esoteric historians. People wanted a glimpse of the future, often desperately.
God had written their fates on their foreheads at birth but that was hard to read in a mirror. It was easy to delude oneself into believing that a mummer might, indeed, reveal the divine plan. And the more so when the future one saw oneself was entirely ugly.
“Hai, peoples. Come see.” He performed a conjuring trick that attracted a few urchins. He did the one where he found a dirty green coin behind a six-year-old’s ear. The kid sprinted off to turn his riches into food. The news brought a raucous crowd of children.
His confidence did not improve. He was not accustomed to children. He was not social at all. He wrestled ferocious doubts as he strove to hide from the world by borrowing a persona from a man long dead.
…
“All this ferment because of one unreliable witness,” Yasmid said. “I don’t understand.”